DellLead Architect and Software Engineer
Jul. 1997 - Jun. 2000I joined Dell just as they were entering the enterprise market with three different server lines. I was a programmer and architect for the Products Group, so I designed, developed, and maintained the IT systems used to properly configure, price, and develop the manufacturing Bill-of-Materials required to construct the systems. As Dell's server, storage, and networking solutions became more advanced, technical validation, pricing, and configuration of these sytems became extrememly complicated. Once Dell began offering rack-mounted, multi-base system solutions, configuration and pricing became almost unmanageable. I was selected to lead a team of five programmers that was dedicated to solving these complex configuration and pricing issues. I architected a system that utilized a third-party configuration engine to manage configuration rules and constraints. We integrated this engine into the sales application used by over 500 Technical Sales Representatives. Primary technologies used were Visual Basic, MSSQL Server, Microsoft Transaction Server, and MSMQ for integration with Dell's back-end mainframe systems. As the application matured, I was responsible for system maintenance and upgrades. As Dell's business model became more focused on driving business via e-commerce, we converted our application to run on the corporate intranet as well as Dell Premier Customer websites. We were able to implement drag-and-drop visual capability that enabled users to physically place systems in racks, as well as build cabling diagrams to ensure that all systems were properly connected. Because the application solved a very challenging techical problem and due to its ease of use, this application was a primary driver of Dell's early success in the Enterprise market. Due to the success of this application and my team, I was Banded a "1" (Top 10% of all employees company-wide) for two consecutive years.