Jay Brown, Developer in Long Beach, CA, United States
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Jay Brown

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Long Beach, CA, United States

Toptal member since October 7, 2019

Expertise
Back-end DevelopersAPIGolangREST APILinuxMacOSJavaGitDockerCWindows DevelopmentC++AWSC#Apache Kafka
Bio

With over 25 years of software development experience, Jay has focused on designing and building enterprise back-end and mid-tier applications, protocols, and APIs for Fortune 1000 companies. He has multiple US patents, has authored the Manning book on Apache OpenCMIS API development, and has presented technical subjects at several IBM international conferences. Jay currently designs and builds distributed systems with Go for his various clients.

Portfolio

Freelance
Go, Kubernetes, Linux, C, Bash, Protobuf, REST APIs, API Architecture...
radio-archive.org
C, C++, Python, Go
Veritone Corporation
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Redis, Apache Kafka, Go, Code Architecture...

Experience

  • Code Architecture - 20 years
  • Interviewing - 20 years
  • API Architecture - 20 years
  • Architecture - 15 years
  • Writing & Editing - 12 years
  • Go - 10 years
  • Linux - 10 years
  • REST APIs - 10 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Windows, Linux, Go

The most amazing...

...thing I've done was make an FFT function in Modula-2 before they had trig functions in the language. I built sin/cos() from scratch using the Taylor series.

Work Experience

Independent Contractor

2019 - PRESENT
Freelance
  • Designed, built, deployed, and managed distributed systems in Golang for various clients.
  • Replaced various back-end JavaScript systems with more stable, maintainable, and monitored Golang services.
  • Reduced downtime, as well as maintenance and AWS costs by replacing fragile inefficient back-end services with more stable and scaleable equivalents.
  • Redesigned processing pipelines and APIs to decrease fragility, increase redundancy, and decrease operational costs.
  • Designed and implemented software-defined radio systems for various signal processing applications.
Technologies: Go, Kubernetes, Linux, C, Bash, Protobuf, REST APIs, API Architecture, Code Architecture, Architecture, Writing & Editing, Redis, Git, Distributed Systems, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), MacOS, Docker, APIs, REST, JSON REST APIs, Back-end, Digital Signal Processing

Founder

2016 - PRESENT
radio-archive.org
  • Designed an SDR (software-defined radio) based spectrum capture application that enables the wholesale collection of AM and FM broadcasts for an entire geographic region at once at a fraction of the cost of current multi-tuner methods.
  • Managed a multi-year 24/7 radio collection effort spanning all AM and FM stations in the Los Angeles area.
  • Designed a transcription appliance that can transcribe audio for 1/5th to 1/10th of the cost of cloud-based services.
Technologies: C, C++, Python, Go

Principal Architect

2017 - 2019
Veritone Corporation
  • Served as a principal architect and was responsible for company-wide design and the review of new systems.
  • Acted as the lead developer and designer for some key back-end distributed systems (Go), e.g., managing the elastic scaling of EC2 resources based on measured Kafka lags.
  • Interviewed candidates for senior positions in engineering.
  • Designed, contributed, and led a team in building and deploying an on-prem cognitive batch processing system for a top-five international media company.
  • Designed and developed a SaaS AI computing platform in Go for real-time use. The system went from a more than 15-minute latency to less than 15 seconds after completion and then handled thousands of parallel video streams for chains of functions.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Redis, Apache Kafka, Go, Code Architecture, Interviewing, Architecture, Writing & Editing, Bash, API Architecture, Git, REST APIs, Distributed Systems, MacOS, Docker, APIs, REST, JSON REST APIs, Back-end

Senior Software Engineer

2006 - 2017
IBM
  • Worked as a mid-tier, back-end, protocol, and API designer and developer (Java). Designed a code generator that reads a database schema and produces the entire API for a $500 million ECM product.
  • Designed and led a geographically distributed (US and China) team to build the Java API for IBM Content Navigator. This API was then used to build the Android mobile client for IBM Content Navigator as well (shipped in 2016).
  • Designed, developed, and published the OASIS CMIS protocol (role: OASIS technical committee member).
  • Spearheaded the CMIS testing effort with internal and external teams (industry participants, e.g., Microsoft, Oracle, and others).
  • Designed and led an international team (US and India) to develop, ship, and support a server based on CMIS (Java Servlet). The system is in use today in hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies worldwide.
  • Authored a book (with Manning Press) on CMIS to increase adoption and promote the specification.
  • Led a team building ECM APIs for an Android application.
  • Contributed to Apache Chemistry at Apache Software Foundation (2011-2016).
Technologies: Go, ECM, Android, Code Architecture, Interviewing, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Architecture, Writing & Editing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bash, API Architecture, Git, Python, REST APIs, Distributed Systems, Kubernetes, MacOS, APIs, REST, JSON REST APIs, Java Development Kit (JDK)

Principal Engineer

1999 - 2006
FileNet Corporation
  • Designed and built Java and .NET APIs for FileNet Content Manager. These are the foundation of thousands of Fortune 1000 production applications that interact today with IBMs FileNet P8 ECM system including all of IBM's in-house ECM applications.
  • Designed and developed a dynamic code generation engine to produce clean/consistent consumable interfaces to the Content Manager APIs.
  • Served as a member of the architecture steering committee.
  • Built P8 administrative tools (C++/COM).
  • Designed a C++ COM wrapper library that would automatically marshal COM objects across thread/apartment boundaries and manage reference counts. The wrapper greatly simplified multithreaded COM programming issues for the rest of the team.
  • Designed automated DevOps tools and frameworks for the P8 team.
Technologies: C#, Java, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM), C++, Code Architecture, Interviewing, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Architecture, Writing & Editing, ECM, Bash

Software Engineer

1993 - 1999
GE Capital
  • Served as the sole designer and developer of the GE automated callback system. Once deployed it handled 5,000-10,000 calls per day—quoting hold times and calling back customers when their position in call queue was up. (Prior to this being a common thing in call centers.) It also involved reverse engineering ATT libraries.
  • Designed and built a control library for AT&T Definity G3 Switch for the above-mentioned system.
  • Designed a cron-like automation infrastructure used for lights out/batch processing in multiple GECMC data centers.
  • Designed and supported 1,500 machine LAN network for a call center.
  • Developed Windows applications used by customer service reps for accessing customer data directly from the mainframe.
Technologies: C++, C, Architecture, Bash

Programmer Analyst

1989 - 1993
Shearson Lehman Mortgage
  • Designed and built a custom TCP/IP router application for AS/400 (ILE 4 C).
  • Served as a system administrator for a large SCO Unix system and NetWare networks.
  • Designed and automated the rollout of a company-wide MS Windows installation.
  • Developed in-house OS/2 and Windows applications. (C/C++).
Technologies: OS/2, Windows, C++, C, Architecture, Bash

Experience

Book: CMIS and Apache Chemistry in Action

https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/1617291153
Published by Manning on January 1, 2013
Authors: Jay Brown, Florian Müller, and Jeff Potts

The comprehensive guide to the CMIS standard/protocol and developing with Apache Chemistry. (ISBN: 1617291153)

Apache Chemistry

https://chemistry.apache.org/
From 2011-2016, I was a contributor to Apache Chemistry.

Standard: Oasis CMIS

http://docs.oasis-open.org/cmis/CMIS/v1.1/CMIS-v1.1.html
From 2008-2016, I was an initial contributor and participant for CMIS 1.0 and 1.1 (writing significant sections for 1.1).

CMIS Server Development Guide

https://chemistry.apache.org/java/developing/
Creative Commons (CC-BY)
Published on November 6, 2013
Authors: Jay Brown, Florian Müller

The companion guidebook for building CMIS servers using the OpenCMIS server framework. It includes a working (Apache 2 licensed) Java servlet that can be copied as a template to build your own CMIS server adapters.

US Patent: Method for Decreasing Battery Power Consumption in Mobile Communication Devices

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9253737B2
United States Patent: US 9253737 (Granted Feb 2, 2016)
Inventors: Jay Brown, Tom Watson

US Patent: Apparatus, System and Method for Dynamic Database-driven Document Synchronization

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7966287
United States Patent: US 7966287 (Granted June 21, 2011)
Inventors: Jay Brown

US Patent: Unmanned Vehicle Movement Path Assignment and Management

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9898932B2/en?oq=9898932
United States Patent: US 9898932B2 (Granted Feb 20, 2018)

Patent Pending: Method of Migrating Electronic Document Version Content and Version Metadata as a Collection with a Single Operation

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110239231A1/
United States Patent Application: US 20110239231 A1
(Pending USPTO)

Code Generator for IBM P8 API

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/filenet-p8-platform/5.2.1?topic=development-content-engine-java-api-reference
Designed a way to generate the IBM P8 APIs from a metadata database. I wrote the first version of the generator myself, making it possible for us to generate additional language bindings. This led to us adding a second C# version of the API, which we could now do with minimal additional effort. Both of these APIs are still used today by thousands of international enterprises.

Education

1986 - 1989

Completed Credits towards a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

University of California, Riverside - Riverside, CA, USA

Certifications

JULY 2015 - JULY 2025

Amateur Operator License (General & Technician Classes)

FCC

OCTOBER 1989 - PRESENT

SCO UNIX System Administration

Ingram Micro-D

Skills

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, Protobuf

Tools

Git, Subversion (SVN), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Java Development Kit (JDK), Amazon Cognito

Languages

Go, Java, Bash, C, C#, Python, C++

Paradigms

API Architecture, REST

Platforms

MacOS, Linux, Docker, Windows, Android, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Kafka, Kubernetes

Frameworks

Swagger

Storage

Redis

Other

ECM, Interviewing, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Code Architecture, Architecture, Writing & Editing, Distributed Systems, APIs, JSON REST APIs, Back-end, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM), OS/2, Digital Signal Processing, Code Generators

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