Being an academic, I get summers off from teaching. When possible, I like to take the opportunity to do three months of software development work for some company. I keeps my programming practices up to date and provides good stories to tell in class…but even more importantly, I enjoy it.

In years past, I’ve done this kind of summer work for Indigo Bioautomation (my retrospective), GroupOn (my retrospective), and Zipper Interactive (a video game company that is now defunct). It’s always been valuable for both me and the company…but it can be a little tricky to find a company that wants a programmer like me for a short term gig.

Generally I look for:

  • A good team of developers working in a space that I don’t have a lot of familiarity with. The better the team I am paired with, the more I learn.

  • A project that I can make a significant contribution to in three months. I usually prefer to work with an existing codebase rather than a one-off project or prototype. I am good at coming up to speed quickly.

  • Any language or problem domain. To me, the team is far more important than the particular language or technology stack we’ll be using. It also isn’t important to me that the problem be of academic interest - I don’t need to publish any papers about my summer programming!

What I provide (not to toot my own horn too outrageously):

  • A smart, pragmatic software developer who is used to shipping software in a variety of contexts

  • Most of my background has involved the web in some way or another, so I am particularly confident there (though maybe not with the newest frameworks). I’m a solid object oriented designer. I like strange programming languages and am not afraid to try strange solutions. More info on my programming background is on the resume. You can also see some of my personal programming projects.

  • For those who are interested in learning theory, interviewing programmers, or forging a better connection with Rose-Hulman, my academic qualifications may also be of interest.

If you know of a place that seems like a good match, feel free to contact me. Here’s my non-academic resume that focuses on my software developer background (and also has contact info).  For family reasons, I’d be particularly interested in places near Indianapolis, Buffalo, or Atlanta.