Mike Demers
I’m a software developer working to deliver great experiences.
Senior Software Engineer - Google
Nov 2016 - present
Developer - Lorem Keysum; Photo Clock
Summer 2016
Developed Lorem Keysum, a third-party keyboard for iOS that generates Lorem Ipsum filler text. Designed and built accompanying website: loremkeysum.com. Developed Photo Clock, a simple utility app built in Swift that calculates the elapsed time between two photos.
Software Engineer - Pinterest
April 2015 - April 2016
Led engineering effort for full-stack advertiser growth team. Beat aggressive growth goals by building in-product features, targeted email, triggered communications, and more, all measured through rigorous A/B testing. Worked across entire stack including front-end and back-end web work (Javascript/Python), asynchronous jobs, Hive queries, and multiple internal services/frameworks.
Director of Engineering - Hike Labs
April 2014 - April 2015 (Acquired by Pinterest)
Led development of an iPhone-based social publishing app and associated back-end service. Iterated through multiple versions of an iOS app consisting of a custom editor, social feed, push notifications, and follower & commenting systems. Built out API, admin dashboard, and web views with Ruby on Rails running on AWS sever instances. Integrated Twitter API for authentication and sharing.
Acquired by Pinterest in April 2015: Techcrunch, Business Insider, Verturebeat
CTO - Captureproof
July 2013 - April 2014
Participated in Techstars Chicago. Built a HIPAA-compliant secure platform for sharing photos and videos between doctors and patients. Led design & development of iOS app, desktop & mobile web apps, and an API. Built a secure media storage platform on top of Amazon S3 and a custom video processing system. Managed small internal engineering team and multiple external contractors.
Developer - News Cam
May 2013
Designed and developed the novelty camera app News Cam and accompanying website NewsCamApp.com. The app lets people record video clips with a customizable “Breaking News” overlay.
Developer - Mosaic / Mixbook
Mar 2012 - Apr 2013
Worked on a small team that conceived, built, and shipped Mosaic, the best photo book creation app for the iPhone. Mosaic has been featured by Apple in the App Store, recommended on the Today Show, the Verge, Uncrate, and Techcrunch. Mosaic was shipped in time for the 2012 holiday season and went on to exceed sales projections.
Awarded US Patents: 8,949,321, 9,282,202, 9,294,635, 9,332,137
Developer - Yobongo
Jul 2011 - Mar 2012 (Acquired by Mixbook)
Joined a small team working on location-based chat app for the iPhone built on a node.js and MongoDB backend. Worked to conceive, prototype, and test possible future directions for service.
Acquired by Mixbook in March 2012: Techcrunch, AllThingsD
Developer - Photo Lights
Dec 2011
Created the Photo Lights app which enables the user to draw blinking holiday lights atop their photos. The decorated photos can then be exported as animated GIFs and shared. Featured on The Next Web.
Senior Software Engineer - Kickball Labs / Muzy
Sep 2009 - Jun 2011
Worked in a small team creating an innovative visual blogging site for creative people. In under 18 months, went from initial concept to product/market fit and through into exponential growth.
Built site using a collaborative interaction design process, taking user scenario flows from brainstorms and sketches to mockups and prototypes before going to code.
Built and optimized multiple viral loops and user acquisition funnels. Improved user experience with extensive A/B testing as well as in-person and remote usability tests and user interviews. Enhanced product through deep, bidirectional integration with popular services such as Facebook and Twitter.
Designed and developed two Flash/Flex apps: a simple photo publishing app with filters, effects and frames as well as a comic creation app that adds speech bubbles and text to photos.
Created an app-building app for a large art site, allowing non-technical users to build their own specialized communities around shared interests and activities.
Founder - 9 Astronauts
May 2006 - present
Created BlameDrewsCancer, Billie Tweets, Lyric Rat, Tweet Bricks, veetweet and the Attack Ad Generator.
My work has been featured on TechCrunch, Mashable, Wired, Read Write Web, Ajaxian and The Next Web. Created the TweetBar a Firefox add-on that puts Twitter in the sidebar of the browser and one of the first third-party Twitter applications.
CTO - You Said It
Aug 2007 - Sep 2009
Developed white-label Question & Answer site for online communities that powers the popular Question Land site at The Stranger, one of the leading alternative newspapers in the US. Product integrates with Facebook through the Facebook API & Facebook Connect and was built using Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, jQuery, and dojo. Service offers SEO-optimized site, full administrative back-end, web-service API and identity integration support through OAuth.
Senior Software Developer - Pluggd
Jun 2006 - Aug 2007
Led the development of an online audio directory and helped create the innovative HearHere audio search technology. Helped present the technology at the DEMO conference. Site featured full community functionality as well as Twitter integration and was built using Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Prototype, Scriptaculous and MySQL.
Software Development Engineer - Amazon.com
Oct 2004 - Apr 2006
Maintained core web server platform by adding new features, fixing bugs, and providing on-call support. Created an automated test bench for the core web server platform that powers amazon.com which deployed the web server platform and content to a test server and ran a series of benchmarks against the deployed server, optionally sending notifications if the results exceeded customizable thresholds. Created a web console that displayed the generated benchmarks as well as computed trends in numerical and graph form along with detailed information about the changes present in a deployment.
CTO & Co-Founder - Inteo
Dec 2001 - Jul 2003
Designed and built high-availability web and application hosting cluster using commodity level hardware running Linux OS and a combination of third party and custom software. Created SMASH, the Scalable Mail Architecture for Shared Hosting, a custom Email (SMTP/POP3) Server and mail storage solution built to take advantage of the clustered environment. Created account manager software using perl and mod_perl that presents a simple, intuitive interface for hosting clients. Handled all aspects of technical development including data center selection, source control, custom billing software, off-site backup procedures, system testing and documentation.
Director of Development - Mystyc New Media
Jun 2001 - Dec 2001
Established a software development department at a growing web design shop with the aim of shifting the strategic focus of the company. Handled sys-admin tasks, created an intranet and client extranet, hired new staff, and ran weekly training lunches to refocus existing staff. Created modular application framework and components for reuse in development projects including a niche real estate listing and search service (http://www.antiquehomesmagazine.com/), an oil tanker scheduling application and shipper extranet (http://www.pmpl.com/), and a careers application, physicians database, and content management system for a hospital (http://www.mercyhospital.org/).
Contract Software & Database Engineer
Jun 2000 - Jun 2001
Participated in various projects as an independent contractor for clients such as Fairchild Semiconductor, US Foodservice, and the Cognex Corporation.
Senior Software Engineer - Block Financial; Genuity (Formerly: GTE Internetworking and BBN)
Sep 1999 - Jul 2000
Developed secure back end to accept tax returns for H&R Block’s first Online TaxCut system and their Kipplinger TaxCut PC Software. Implemented real-time Credit Card processing through CyberCash payment gateway. Maintained system as it handled 750,000+ returns in the 3+ month tax season.
Software Engineer - Thomson Financial
Oct 1997 - Sep 1999
Developed an intranet tool that provided access to production data in Thomson’s MarketMatch global trading system. Worked on MarketMatch back-end application code (written in C++, utilizing Tuxedo middleware) as well as the front end code (written in Java). Worked on Sybase back-end of trading system associated with the London Stock Exchange, adding new functionality and supporting existing system.
C/C++ Programmer - Unicam Software
Jan 1997 - Oct 1997
Developed DLL application extensions to existing product suite of Windows NT-based Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software. Development included creating advanced decision making algorithms in order to generate optimized machine level instructions for robotic manufacturing equipment. Debugged existing interfaces and consulted on future interface designs.
BS Computer Science - University of New Hampshire
1992 - 1997