I’m passionate about technology, writing, and helping others.

Experience summary

See my technical writing portfolio here.

Superpowers

We’ve all got ‘em, but not everyone realizes what theirs are or when they’re using them. These are mine.

• Adaptable - Jack of all trades who enjoys learning new things and filling in the gaps.
• Building relationships - Collaborate & communicate across disciplines & teams to strengthen communities.
• Empathy - With customers and peers, it’s what I do.
• Humor - Because some days, laughing is the only thing I can actually control.

Google

Technical Writer - April 2018 to Present

• Designed and published the capstone module for the internal version of Google’s Machine Learning Crash Course, collaborating closely with engineering to create an end-to-end scenario that guides engineers through the process of creating and using a machine learning model.
• Planned, architected, and authored the complete documentation set for a new version of committed use discounts (CUD), helping drive millions in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
• Helped customers understand and query their Billing data exported to BigQuery with documentation and sample queries for detailed usage cost data, a high-priority customer requested feature.
• Managed the migration of a complete documentation set from V1 to V2 while maintaining both sets for existing and new customers (this product has since been deprecated).
• Reduced time creating weekly release notes by 87% (8-hours/week to 1-hour/week) by collaborating with engineering tech lead to define and implement a revised process.
• Respected and active community leader—hosted and mentored interns, successfully shepherded technical writer candidates through the hiring process to employment offers, and recognized strong contributor to several working groups (see awards).
• Created a widely used doc plan template for the Cloud writing community that was reviewed and recommended by several senior writers.

Awards

• Leads with Respect award - Nominated & approved by committee of peers for community leadership.
• 50 peer/spot bonuses & kudos - Given by peers & managers for a variety of reasons, including outstanding performance and community service.

Technologies used

Markdown, Python, Bash, GoogleSQL, Visual Studio Code, Google Issue Tracker, proprietary code review tool, proprietary version & source control systems

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HBO

Technical Writer - April 2016 to March 2018

• Worked closely with engineers throughout the development process to author complete and accurate runbook documentation that helped them effectively troubleshoot live-site issues 24x7.
• Designed and implemented a distributed build and publishing system to pull together markdown documents from multiple GitHub repositories and convert them into static HTML pages to be published to a single site. This put the documentation next to the code, making it easier for engineers to participate in writing efforts.
• Proactively engaged with development and operations engineers to collect requirements and feedback that improved the efficiency and effectiveness of the runbook documentation set.
• Tested documentation steps that exercised API’s between micro-services.
• Developed data driven processes to find problem areas with a high rate of error recurrence, subsequently improving the documentation and reducing the time to mitigate incidents by on-call engineers.
• Created a handbook for engineers, providing guidance to using Splunk for investigating site incidents.

Technologies used

Markdown, Git, GitHub, Visual Studio Code, Bash, Python, AWS, Ubuntu, Jenkins, Splunk, Pandoc, Jira, YouTrack

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Microsoft

October 1999 to December 2015

Excel

Software Development Engineer in Test [SDET I & II] / Software Engineer II - March 2007 to December 2015

• Developed and authored internal documentation for other engineers that detailed internal tools and APIs, concepts, step-by-step processes, and organizational standards.
• Managed relationships with partner teams regarding design considerations, timelines, test coverage, the effects of world-wide deployment, and other areas of platform integration.
• Orchestrated data driven planning, testing, and measurable success criteria for feature sets (using business intelligence, BI, tools) to target problem areas that most impacted Excel Online customers.
• Formalized the on-call engineer processes used by Excel engineers to troubleshoot and mitigate real-time problems inherent in running a service worldwide, across multiple data centers using web front ends connecting with back end servers, and resolving issues within a matter of minutes when possible.
• Drove the cross-team coordination of testing for the initial launch of Excel Online as a new service, offering web spreadsheets via OneDrive (SkyDrive), Outlook.com (Hotmail), and several third-party hosts, such as Facebook.
• Owned, drove, and tested complicated feature areas integral to the infrastructure of Excel Online across multiple platforms (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Office Web Apps Server and OneDrive/Hosted) using APIs.
• Primary driver for setup and deployment of Excel Services with both the on-premise version (SharePoint) as well as the enterprise cloud hosts (OneDrive). This included providing design input, creating extensive test plans, understanding how deployment works in depth, and significant cross team collaboration.

Technologies used

C#, PowerShell, SQL, T-SQL, Splunk, Visual Studio, Source Depot (proprietary version & source control), Product Studio (proprietary bug tracking)

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Windows Live Security

Software Development Engineer [SDE I] - March 2005 to March 2007

• Extensive cross-team collaboration with MSN Operations Tools group in developing an application to retrieve and consume SMS events from their SQL 2000 database for security issues reporting.
• Worked with the program manager and internal customer to design, develop, test, and deploy a database-driven web application using object-oriented methodologies allowing for modular development and growth.
• Wrote an external blog focused on development, with reviews of technical books and detailed code snippets in C#, .NET, PowerShell, and Transact-SQL.

Systems Engineer - October 2003 to March 2005

• Improved efficiency by automating multiple manual tasks with CMD batch, Visual Basic, and Transact-SQL scripts.
• Supported the servers in the data center environments and triaged problems encountered in the operating system, IIS, SQL, DNS, Active Directory, and more while implementing resolutions using CMD batch and Visual Basic scripts.

Awards

• Microsoft Gold Star Award - Improved the team’s efficiency and accuracy by identifying and automating several repetitive manual processes.

Technologies used

C#, ASP.NET, SQL, T-SQL, Visual Studio, HTML, CSS, XML, XLS, OOP, Source Depot (proprietary version & source control), Product Studio (proprietary bug tracking)

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MSN Service Operations Center (SOC)

Lead Systems Administrator - October 2002 to October 2003

• Managed a small team of systems administrators while also providing technical mentorship.

Systems Administrator - January 2002 to October 2002

• Provided second-level triage and troubleshooting for multiple MSN properties supported by the MSN Service Operations Center (SOC).

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Operations and Technology Group

SQL Team Lead - March 2001 to December 2001

• Managed a team of ten people who provided tier three-level monitoring and support for 425+ servers running SQL Server 6.5, 7.0 and 2000 in a multiple domain environment across several global Microsoft data centers.

Data Center Operations (DCOPs) Lead - October 1999 to March 2001

• Provided senior-level troubleshooting for all issues, including, but not limited to NT4.0, Windows 2000 Server, IIS, WINS, DNS, SQL, and network connectivity in the Microsoft and MSN global data centers.

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Fohn, Spink, and Co., CPAs

Systems Administrator - September 1996 to December 2005

This is where I cut my teeth on technology; designing, setting up and supporting a small network environment. After supporting the firm of 20 people on Novell Netware 3.0 for a year, I migrated them to Windows NT 4.0 on a custom spec’d server with RAID 5 for data redundancy, offsite tape backup storage plan, and Windows clients.

Staff Accountant - January 1996 to September 1999

Assisted small business clients and individuals with the preparation of Federal Income Taxes, payroll accounting processes and forms, and general bookkeeping.

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