Noah Sussman
Currently pursuing Computer Science degree at The City College of New York and working as Senior Web Developer at CollegeBoard.com.
| Headline: | Engineer |
| Website: | http://onemorebug.com |
| Skills: | English, Languages, Spanish |
| Location: | New York |
| Interested in: | Consulting opportunities, Finding team mates, Meeting new people, Providing services to startups, Trading services |
| Tags: | accessibility, dhtml, javascript, markup, usability, web, web standards |
| Schools: | City University of New York System - City College |
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | CollegeBoard.com, New York, NY |
| Position: | Senior Web Developer |
| Time period: | March 2007 - Present |
| Description: | Senior JavaScript architect for distributed team of over 100 J2EE engineers. Led and promoted the professional development of a team of 8 Front-End developers. Refactored legacy DHTML procedures into an Object-Oriented library. Guided the adoption of the JQuery JavaScript library. Defined the College Board's style rules for authoring CSS, JavaScript and XHTML.
Regularly led intensive training sessions for project managers, QA and developers. Hosted 3-5 developer “hack day” exercises on rapid prototyping a working Ajax product in a single day. Provided SEO insight for Social Media. Advised executives on strategies for Web 2.0 search positioning such as RESTful URLs. Trained Front-End developers to produce Facebook applications. Used Ruby, PHP and MySQL to produce proof-of-concept Facebook mashups using Google Maps and a proprietary JSON API for highly regarded college search Web service. Introduced Selenium Core for regression testing DHTML. Wrote tests for CSS and HTML with Selenium-RC and JUnit. Experimented with Selenium-RC, Perl and Ruby to perform analysis and validation of Web sites. Generated reports from Tidy, OpenJade, JSLint and Raakt. Introduced architects to Processing for visualization of HTML DOM trees. Worked with a distributed team to improve the HTML, CSS and JavaScript development environment. Introduced Apache Server and Tomcat, as user-friendly replacements for iPlanet and WebLogic. Designed a Freemarker and Struts 2 framework for decoupling GUI screens from application logic so that they could be treated as if they were “flat HTML” when under development, then deployed to a Java app without further integration. With a distributed team of 12 developers and consultants, migrated CollegeBoard.com's HTML filesystem into a ClearCase vob. Point-of-contact for ClearCase documentation, configuration and training. Enabled Front-End developers to leverage the ClearCase command-line interface and Cygwin. Guided the adoption of Atlassian Confluence wiki as usage grew from 25 to 100 accounts over 14 months. Team point-of-contact for documentation and training with regard to configuring and using Confluence and MediaWiki. Authored documentation for best practices on a wide variety of technical topics including valid markup, Accessibility, Object-Oriented JavaScript, Ajax patterns, and leveraging the QuickBase HTTP API. Worked with a distributed team of software engineers and Web metrics analysts to implement, optimize and tune Omniture Web analytics and life-cycle tracking across 20+ legacy applications and thousands of static HTML pages. Worked with individual developers to design tools to automate repetitive tasks. Perl script for labeling ClearCase elements in batches. Bookmarklet for quickly submitting QuickBase Web forms. GreaseMonkey userscript for detecting Web pages not tracked in Omniture. |
| Employer: | Jones Apparel Group, New York, NY |
| Position: | JavaScript Consultant |
| Time period: | January 2005 - December 2006 |
| Description: | Senior JavaScript architect for 10-developer e-commerce team maintaining J2EE Web applications such as Barneys.com, NineWest.com, JonesNewYork.com, JNY.com, and EasySpirit.com. Lead a team of 4 Presentation-Layer consultants and reported to the Creative Director.
Interactive Designer and Front-End Developer for marketing team in charge of creating an Ajax shopping cart pattern for online apparel sales. This “graphical product chooser” pattern has remained in use at NineWest.com since the 2006 public beta. Significantly, the pattern was subsequently adopted in the industry at large, including an implementation at Amazon's Endless.com. Installed and configured MediaWiki as an intranet hub. Evangelized a workflow that embraced collaborative knowledge capture. MediaWiki was successfully adopted and is still in use by the group. Introduced regression testing for JavaScript with Selenium and Perl. Wrote a Perl test framework that leveraged Tidy for validating the source tree of a JSP application for adherence to the W3C XHTML specification. Collaborated with J2EE architects to migrate legacy Java Web applications to a 3-tiered architecture. SiteMesh and JSP were the presentation layer, Velocity the controller and Spring and Hibernate provided data abstraction over an Oracle back end. Provided JavaScript architectural knowledge including guiding the adoption of the Prototype.js JavaScript library. Leveraged Prototype.js to author portable implementations of common DHTML patterns such as dependent select menus, tool tips and CSS overlays that always display just above the fold. Designed and maintained a bookmarklet to facilitate capturing task descriptions from Atlassian Jira. Worked with small teams of consultants to extensively customize the look-and-feel of RightNow Technologies' Customer Support and Store Locator portals. These recurring projects involved applying CSS and JavaScript features to the PHP presentation layer of a third-party C++ Web application. Implemented life-cycle and conversion tracking with HitBox. Worked with marketing team to customize and tune HitBox's analysis capabilities. Augmented JSPs to provide JavaScript meta-data for granular conversion tracking with HitBox. Reviewed monthly site traffic reports and participated in implementing SEO strategies based on observations gleaned from analytical data. Starting with layered PSDs and functional specifications, used ImageReady and a text editor to produce Web pages and integrate them as JSP. Maintained a local development environment that included iPlanet server and WebLogic with WebFlows. Used Cygwin with Ant and later Maven for building J2EE Web applications from source code stored in a Perforce repository. Outside business hours, point-of-contact for notifications regarding the health of production iPlanet and WebLogic instances. Responsible for restarting the production Web servers when necessary. |
| Employer: | Elysian Charter School, Hoboken, NJ |
| Position: | Technology Consultant |
| Time period: | September 2003 - January 2005 |
| Description: | Designed a curriculum to introduce 5-8 grade students to the skills used by professional Web developers. This included PhotoShop and Microsoft Office, but also extended to skills for publishing HTML Web pages with a text editor, the Windows command shell, FTP and SSH.
Mentored individual students in basic JavaScript programming. Introductory lesson in invoking the javascript: protocol from the URL bar followed by building Eliza-like interactive “games” using conditional logic, alert() and confirm(). Students were later able to combine these skills with DOM methods to produce simple interactive Web pages. After 2 semesters of teaching the basic course described above, introduced TADS, a C-like language for authoring Interactive Fiction games. Building on their basic programming knowledge, students were encouraged to collaboratively produce mixed-media concept and story designs; then author a game incorporating those elements. 2 versions of the game were produced: a “rich” HTML desktop application that included illustrations and graphical world maps, and a text-only Java applet that was published on the class' Web site. Designed, coded in PHP and managed hosting of the Elysian Charter School Web site. |
| Employer: | RCMI, New York, NY |
| Position: | Research Associate |
| Time period: | June 2003 - June 2004 |
| Description: | Lead programmer for bioinformatics research team at the Research Center for Minority Institutions at the City College of New York.
Provide BioPerl and HTTP API expertise to an 8-member laboratory team investigating strategies for mashing up research data with public GIS data sets to achieve insights into sociogeographic factors affecting the spread of HIV in Uganda. Applied BioPerl and other protein modeling tools to problems posed by primary genetic data collected by the lab team in Uganda, the Dominican Republic and the Bronx. Co-authored results which were published in 2005 in Intervirology. Teaching Assistant for BIO 310115: Ecology of Infectious Diseases taught by the team's lead researcher. Wrote and taught course materials on using Excel for statistical analysis and visualization of epidemiological data. Outside of course hours, mentored individual students during first exposure to BioPerl and the HTTP APIs associated with public genetic databases. Used PHP to maintain a blog for knowledge-sharing between team members. |
| Employer: | DeltaThree.com, New York, NY |
| Position: | Senior Web Developer |
| Time period: | March 2001 - September 2001 |
| Description: | Led a team of 3 Front-End developers in hand-coding HTML and CSS screens for ASP-based VoIP promotions, including a Microsoft-branded VoIP product. Reported to the Creative Director.
Opportunity to work directly with expert Interaction Designers. Learned techniques for illustrative drawing with vector graphics in Illustrator and Flash. Extensively customized HTML, CSS and PHP for RightNow Technologies' Customer Support portal. |
| Employer: | HotSocket.com, New York, NY |
| Position: | Senior Web Producer |
| Time period: | August 2000 - February 2001 |
| Description: | Hand-coded and debugged DHTML for cross-browser compatibility. Projects included a hierarchical DHTML tree menu and client-side form validation algorithms.
Authored HTML pages and emails, starting with layered PSDs provided by the graphic design team. Integrated finished DHTML with a proprietary multivariate testing and life-cycle tracking application. A typical Hotsocket campaign consisted of 3-5 pages and had 3 or more possible permutations per page. The design, content, development and QA teams all worked closely to ensure a seamless user experience and brand message across all possible multivariate states. Over 6 months, grew from junior developer to lead DHTML programmer. Promoted from Web Producer to Senior Web Producer. Reported to the Creative Director. |
| Employer: | SharpGallery.com, New York, NY |
| Position: | Web Director |
| Time period: | August 1999 - May 2000 |
| Description: | Worked directly with the publisher of Avalanche art zine to conceptualize and execute “virtual art galleries;” mini-sites designed around physical collections of fine art objects.
Promoted cross-channel events in Manhattan to coincide with the online exhibitions. Provided MapQuest URLs for gallery events. Managed email campaigns and the gallery's mailing list. Assured interoperability and cross-platform performance for HTML 3.2 and CSS. |
| Employer: | Noah Sussman New Media LLC, New York, NY |
| Position: | Owner |
| Time period: | January 1999 - March 2007 |
| Description: | Client-Side Web programming consultant on various 30-to-90-day contract projects.
Provided the New York Public Library's main branch with a JavaScript intranet application for calculating the optimal angle at which to display rare books. Used PHP and JavaScript to implement the public beta of a community portal for FreeWilliamsburg.com. Designed, hand-coded and managed the hosting of a Web presence for The Journal of Student Research at CCNY. Advised developers at Clickable.com on integrating hand-coded css and html with a .Net application. Implemented templates for DHTML e-commerce sites in JSP; and in Perl with HTML::Template. Debugged site-specific CSS and JavaScript for Perl and PHP blogging platforms such as MovableType and WordPress. Translated QuarkXPress layouts to HTML with PhotoShop and a text editor. Optimized microcontent for SEO performance and findability. Moderated live online chats. |
| Employer: | New York and Washington, D.C. |
| Position: | Multimedia Consultant |
| Time period: | July 1991 - March 2000 |
| Description: | Installed multimedia display technology for corporate events and theatrical performances; including enterprise LAN and audiovisual presentation gear.
Used Industrial Design tools to prototype and fabricate commercial displays. Also fabricated set pieces for Off-Broadway theaters. Wrote and received college credit for an undergraduate Anthropology paper based on nine months apprenticeship at an ecologically sustainable furniture factory in the Caribbean. Used QuarkXPress, PageMaker and CorelDraw to publish and distribute a small-run multimedia zine dedicated to literature and graphic design; about 25 issues between 1991 and 1999. Publication formats included digital, print and cassette tape. Contributors included John Ashbery. |
EDUCATION
| University: | City University of New York System - City College |
| Degree: | Computer Science , BSc |
INFORMATION
| Memberships: | New York City Interaction Designers' Association
New York Usability Professionals' Association |
