Mark Maxham mark.maxham@gmail.com
Redwood City, CA
Summary: I am a technical manager and hands-on engineer with a diverse background. I have a track record of building high-performance teams by identifying, recruiting, motivating, and retaining top developer talent. I am a broadly-experienced developer who has shipped multiple products in diverse industries using a variety of languages and toolchains. I get stuff done with speed and quality. I put stakes in the ground, build in the face of uncertainty, defer to ideas that are better than mine.
Objective: I'm seeking interesting challenges with talented peers
Interests: Transportation logistics, connected and autonomous vehicles, biomedical instrumentation, games and simulation, cloud computing
Languages: Fluent: C#, Java, Groovy, ES6, HTML/CSS, C++, C, Python
Familiar: Scala, Perl, Ruby, PHP, Elixir, assembly, bash, SQL
Fascinated: Lisp, Erlang, Haskell
Experience: Lacuna (Dec 2018-present)
Director, Platform Engineering; Full-stack Engineer
Lacuna and its subsidiary, Ellis and Associates, help cities plan and implement mobility strategy through consulting and technical development. Much of E&A's software has been contributed to the Open Mobility Foundation.
  • First engineer, first technical manager
  • Wrote Agency and Policy APIs in the Mobility Data Specification
  • Built first implementation of Agency and Policy services, deployed into AWS on behalf of LADOT
  • Responsible for architecture, language, technology choices
  • Hired engineering, data, devops, and project management teams (16 people)
  • Stack includes TypeScript, Kubernetes, Postgres, Redis, React

Zipcar (2014-Dec 2018)
Director, Engineering; Full-stack Engineer
As a director, hired and managed a mixture of engineers with front-end, back-end, devops, embedded hardware, and firmware experience to built connected-car applications for Zipcar and its parent company, Avis. Responsible for core platform architecture, fleet operations tooling, customer support applications, telematics/firmware/hardware teams.
As an engineer, Built products for connected-car/IoT products. Implemented instant-turnaround customizations for specific customer needs while maintaining enterprise reliability.

  • Designed and built various features including sleep-mode, billing, customer onboarding, GPS analytics, dynamic customizations for specific customer needs. Stack includes Grails, Java 8, Postgres, RabbitMQ, Redis, Docker.
  • Main technical contact for support, sales, marketing. Went on sales calls.
  • Wrote reqs, screened resumes, led interview processes for engineers and QA.
  • Hired and managed junior engineers.
  • Wrote project requirements and specifications; managed delivery schedules.
Sensity Systems Inc. (2012-2014)
Director, Cloud Software
Managed webapp and server teams at an IoT company that embeds compute/wireless/sensors in industrial lighting fixtures. My staff included server engineers, web developers, and UX designers.
  • Designed and implemented the web front-end for a cloud-based resource-management application. Used Javascript/HTML/CSS with RESTful APIs, jQuery, several jQuery extensions, Backbone, Underscore, Flot. Did a bit of the backend in Scala using Play and SBT.
  • Worked with customers, ops, and marketing to develop product requirements, worked with design firm to spec art assets; performed user testing, wrote test plans.
  • Developed with Scrum-lite agile process, using tools including Planbox, github, JIRA, Sublime; deployed on AWS (EC2, S3).
  • Edited and reviewed multiple patents while managing creation of IP portfolio.
  • Acted as part-time IT department for firm, using Google Apps, Google Drive, Backblaze, etc.
Pacific Biosciences Inc. (2004-2012)
Senior Manager, Deployment (2010-2012)
Created and led group to bridge software deployment for engineering, verification, manufacturing, and field support. My team was responsible for the instrument operating system, configuration and calibration data, build and release systems, remote access, and automated instrument monitoring. We developed PacBio's internal LIMS system and managed our petabyte of storage. We hosted the wiki, revision control, and bug tracking systems.
Manager, Instrument Software (2006-2010)
Leader of software team for DNA sequencing startup, reporting to VP SW. Performed project planning and scheduling, staffing, mentoring, gathering requirements, server configuration. Assembled original SW team of nine direct reports, then hired and helped VP SW to grow the team to 46 developers in five groups. This team built the software stack for PacBio's instrument. Delivered a diverse array of components, including control loops, image processing, robotics, machine vision, GUI, database, sample-prep protocol.
Principal Engineer (2004-2006)
Designed and implemented apps for lab automation, data visualization, data processing, and build system. Four patents granted: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Mirra Inc. (2002-2004)
Principal Engineer
Participated in specification, design, and development of the Mirra Personal Server. It provides continuous real-time backup (local and off-site), remote access, file sharing, and synchronization. Main contributions were to embedded java infrastructure (sync engine, authentication, etc.) on the appliance. Also contributed to the PC client (C#), and web service using JBoss, EJBs, and JSP. Team lead with two direct reports. Shipped 1.0, 1.1, 2.0. Filed one patent.

Ciena Inc. (1999-2002)
Principal Engineer
Tech lead of ON-Designer, Ciena's planning tool. OND provides network layout, enforces detailed engineering rules, performs physical simulation of signals in fibers, optimizes card placement, generates work orders and connection diagrams as well as troubleshooting guides. Developed ND from crude prototype to sophisticated application. Received two patents.

Intermix Media (1998-1999)
Director of Engineering
Designed and implemented large-scale multiplayer game and multiuser helpdesk system. Entirely written in Java, it includes JDK 1.02 applets, JDK 1.2 servers, JDBC database access, and a servlet-based front-end. Used custom reliable datagram protocol for scalability. Also served as team leader, doing recruiting, scheduling, test-planning, with five direct reports.

Maxham Consulting (1998-present)
Freelance engineer involved in a diverse array of software projects Glassworks Inc. (1996-1998)
Founder and Architect
Principal in a software tech startup. Developed large-scale multi-user extensible virtual-reality technology. My technical contributions included physics modeling, space-management, parts of an OpenGL-based graphics engine, and a distributed-object consistency model. Designed and implemented a graphical chat-room in Java. Developed tools for filtering e-mail, including spam identification. Designed and implemented a large number of C++ and Java classes. Participated in all company activities: project management, sales and marketing, documentation, hiring, Unix & NT administration, webmastering.

Apple Computer (1991-1992, 1994-1996)
Intern, Engineer II
  • Developed teleconferencing software components for QuickTime Conferencing. Implemented multicast A/V protocols rtp, rtcp, and sd, as well as audio and video codecs. Created a Unix-based reflector for QTC.
  • Studied communications issues in mobile computing. Wrote tools to integrate e-mail, voice-mail, fax, pages, and other messages into a single environment.
  • Investigated component-based software implementation. Worked on predecessor of OpenDoc. Extended AppleEvent mechanism to Unix platforms. Created Mac applications, drivers, inits, and control panels.
Novatec Medical (1990-1991)
Electrical and Software Engineer
Researched, designed, programmed and prototyped a device to electronically detect failures of latex gloves during surgery. A 68HC11 in a pager-sized package performs signal processing on a low-amperage current between the doctor and patient. One patent granted.

YMCA Camp Grady Spruce (Summer 1992)
Behavior Modification Specialist Spent a summer as a counselor at the camp I attended as a tyke. Was responsible for groups of five to eight boys, ages 8-12, for two-week periods. Supervised activities including swimming, archery, riflery, hiking, water skiing, games, and sailing. Trained in first aid, CPR, and lifeguarding.
Training: From the Laboratory to Leadership, 2005
CCL Leadership Development Program, 2008
Education: Rice University, Houston Tx. MS EE 1994, BS EE 1991, BA CS 1990
Master's thesis: ASPEN, high-performance hardware support for distributed shared-memory. Research areas: shared memory multiprocessors, memory event ordering and consistency models, cache coherence, architecture interaction with OS and language design.
Activities: Ultimate frisbee, flying, flying trapeze, ice hockey, snowboarding, travel