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Resume
Eric Merritt's Resume
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resume

Relevant Accounts

TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE

Visionary, innovative, persistent and hands-on Technology Executive [EM1]with demonstrated aptitude for developing world class organizations from the ground floor, recruiting and managing high-performing teams of technologists, and designing technology solutions with a multi-faceted understanding of a productÕs growth potential. Outstanding interpersonal skills for building cohesive teams. Dynamic and flexible with the ability to fill in as a Principal Engineer when the need arises. Holder of multiple patents and published author.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Strategic Planning
  • Staff Recruitment
  • Project/Program Management
  • Training & Mentoring
  • Process Engineering
  • IT Governance
  • Regulated Environments
  • Emerging Technologies
  • Contract Negotiations

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Director Product Software Engineering

  • 2018 – Present; Sinclair Broadcast Group., Seattle, WA

• Released a major new Over the Top Television (appleTV,FireTV,etc) product on time for the first time in the group’s history. • Reduced employee turnover from 30% in the previous 6 months to 2% in the first year. • Doubled production delivery cadence by pushing autonomy and decision making into the individual contributor level, removing unnecessary process and bureaucracy overburden.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

2015 - 2018; SUNLIGHT PAYMENTS, INC., Bellevue, WA

Lead technological functions for a Gates backed startup venture with a mandate to solve the problems facing NGOs in funding philanthropic projects in developing countries.

  • Developed comprehensive technology roadmaps based on rigorous analysis of complex problems. Assessed staffing needs to execute on the plan.
  • Recruited world class organization of software engineers to create best-in-class financial transaction systems on the fraud prevention and money transmission sides. Performed hands-on coding when needed.
  • Lead the development of Sunlight`s transparency and anti-fraud platform from scratch, resulting in a successful pilot in East Africa

CTO/Founder

2011 - 2015; AFINIATE, INC., Washington DC.

Co-founded and served as the chief executive responsible for technology acquisition and development along with recruiting and managing of engineering staff.

  • Recruited four top-caliber engineers and contributing members of the staff despite providing compensation solely in the form of equity, eliminating a major financial constraint on the companyÕs success. Designed and implemented a distributed system to provide real-time analytics of financial data in the banking sector

  • Responding to market feedback, reconceptualized the product and implemented a strategy for pivoting to the business operations space. Oversaw the redesign of the system to accommodate need for exponential scaling.

  • Invented a new system capable of complex pattern recognition on large data sets using a previously unknown approach. Implemented and tested the system for successful outcome before running out of funding.

Manager Architect

2012 - 2013; FIVE9, INC., San Ramon, CA

Architected and managed the development of Five9Õs next-generation distributed telephony platform. Designed technologies useful for identifying potential problems in data centers before outages and alert human operators to take preventive measures.

  • Assessed and redesigned existing systems to enhance fault tolerance and distribution of hardware..
  • Led the geographically distributed engineering team tasked with building and deploying the new platform. Provided intensive mentoring of engineers on the fundamentals of distributed system design and implementation.
  • Designed and implemented strong quality processes for the entire organization, establishing an expectation of instant continuous delivery of all code changes which was achieved within only a few months.
  • Architected the infrastructure necessary to support continuous delivery of the new platform.

Senior Software Engineer

2013 - 2015; Amazon.com, Seattle, WA

Third hire in a new Amazon organization for distributed systems expertise and track record of driving greenfield projects. Responsible for creating a real-time, distributed gaming system and scaling the organization.

  • Recruited a team of 130 people who would build out and support the platform. Established the hiring bar, managed the intake process, and attended relevant conferences to pitch top potential candidates.
  • Designed/prototyped the technology platform and supporting systems and provided technical leadership to the organization in both system design and work procedures.
  • Provided individually-customized training and mentoring with team members to help them to achieve competency in utilizing the required probabilistic and statistical approaches.

Senior Software Engineer

2010 - 2011; eCD Market, Chicago IL

Helped build a new trading exchange designed to bring efficiency and liquidity to the Certificates of Deposit market.

  • Designed and implemented development and engineering procedures around product delivery.
  • Mentored and grew technology team members in engineering practices and the reality of distributed systems.

Senior Software Engineer

2008 - 2010; PEAK6 Investments LP, Chicago IL

Started a greenfield High-Frequency Trading system and organized the team and infrastructure for its support. Designed and implemented an low level trading system with design concessions to optimize for vertical vs. horizontal scaling requirements. Provided resources to Quantitative Analysts and Traders to leveraged this system.

  • Leveraged the many-core architecture of its target hardware and still maintained throughput and response times of 50% of the target SLA
  • Designed and implemented a Domain Specific Language for Strategy development and the compiler infrastructure to allow the Strategy to perform competitively to hand coded Strategies.

Software Development Engineer

*2004 - 2008; AMAZON.COM, Seattle, WA

Launched a project to reduce recruiting costs by using machine learning techniques to automate aspects of human interaction in the process.

  • Invented a way to predict the likely results for each leg of the recruiting process by exploiting AmazonÕs rich corpus of interview pipeline results.
  • Achieved correct predictions for whether a candidate would pass the dual phone screen procedure with 70% success rate and full loop with 65% rate.
  • Built a Fitness Function metric platform to support implementation of the Two-Pizza Team concept.
  • Designed the FunctionÕs language, tested it with customers, and optimized its effectiveness.
  • Created an IDE to allow customers to manipulate the Fitnes Function in real time.

Senior Programmer Analyst

2001 - 2004; STERLING HEALTHCARE, INC., Raliegh-Durham, NC

Consultant

1999 - 2001; MCCORMACK & ASSOCIATES, INC., Charlotte, NC.

Database Administrator

1996 - 1999; UNIVERSAL SOLUTIONS, INC., Winston-Salem, NC

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

  • 2010; Author of Erlang & OTP In Action, Manning Publications
  • 2014 - Present; Contributing Author, DevOps.com
  • 2006 - Present; Founding Member, Erlware

LANGUAGES

English and Spanish

Patents

  • 2014 Peer-to-peer quorum sensing - 8880585
  • 2014 Use of peer-to-peer teams to accomplish a goal - 8639739
  • 2012 System and method for managing content interest data using peer-to-peer logical mesh networks - 8214475
  • 2012 System and method for client-side widget communication - 8104044
  • 2010 Method and system for determining and notifying users of undesirable network content - 7797421
  • 2010 Method and system for displaying interest space user communities - 7685192