Christopher Robison

Turning ideas into reality.

Christopher Robison

Turning ideas into reality.

I love to code. There I've said it. Sure, I have a unique blend of technical know-how, leadership skills, and business acumen but my lifelong love is for coding. A little background about me: I have extensive experience in software engineering plus I've learned that I have a special skill: leading groups of unruly programmers. I am also skilled in a wide range of programming languages, including JavaScript, C, C++, Java, Python, Swift, Kotlin, Rust, Go and others. I have a proven track record of successfully meeting deadlines and delivering code that is robust and well tested. Most recently, I brought D. Harris Tours, a small transportation company, into the 21st century by modernizing their operations, resulting in a fleet expansion from 2 to 12 buses and a corresponding 10X increase in revenue. I could go on but I'm afraid I've said too much already 😁

Work Experience

 23 Years

D. Harris Tours, Inc.

San Francisco, CA

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CTO

February 2020 – June 2024

  • Designed and implemented a end-to-end transportation management system
    • CRM
    • Scheduling (Drivers & Buses)
    • Automated Notifications (Phone, Email or SMS)
    • GPS Tracking of Assets
    • Invoicing
    • Payment Collection
    • Customer Portal
  • Spearheaded technological transformation and business processes that allowed D Harris to grow from a fleet of two buses to 14(!) buses.
  • Updated and enhanced the company's systems with modern tools to better manage the growing business, including real-time bus data, automated maintenance notifications, and automated trip confirmations and notifications via email and SMS.
  • Implemented route optimization algorithm to identify opportunities for one bus to handle multiple trips, increasing their daily revenue by 30%.
  • Implemented automated notifications for trips, bus maintenance, and billing and invoicing.
  • check_circle_outlined      (Re)defined processes and procedures for quoting, fulfilling and invoicing trips
  • check_circle_outlined      Automated email/SMS notifications for trips, driver confirmations, bus maintenance
  • check_circle_outlined      Automated billing and invoicing
  • check_circle_outlined      Implemented USDOT required digital format driver logs
  • check_circle_outlined      Increased daily revenue with better trip optimization
Conversant, Inc.

San Francisco, CA

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Manager, Software Engineering

July 2010 – February 2020

Designed, developed, and maintained the infrastructure and code-base that served many millions of mobile and rich media ads each day. Led the Rich Media effort and helped modernize the ad serving infrastructure and metric collection. Designed and implemented a RESTful API for serving rich media ads and built out scalable backend services to handle integration with existing servers and infrastructure.
  • check_circle_outlined      Contributed to IAB MRAID 2.0 standard
  • check_circle_outlined      Implemented MRAID SDK's on iOS and Android platforms
  • check_circle_outlined      Developed and deployed mobile ad solutions for multiple platforms.
  • check_circle_outlined      Designed and deployed 'Rich Media' ad delivery and reporting infrastructure.
  • check_circle_outlined      Architected and deployed RESTful API for ad serving, tracking metrics and reporting.
  • check_circle_outlined      Developed client-side Javascript 'ad controller' for mobile and web
  • check_circle_outlined      Developed flexible metrics tracking with non-blocking endpoints
  • check_circle_outlined      10 years
Mindjet

San Francisco, CA

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Web Architect

September 2007 – July 2010

Led Mindjet's initial Software as a Service (SaaS) product, Mindjet Catalyst. Transformed Mindjet's business model with the new service nearly doubling monthly revenue.
  • check_circle_outlined      Ported PHP website to ASP.NET
  • check_circle_outlined      Ported Catalyst Flash client to standards based HTML5/canvas
  • check_circle_outlined      Architected and led the team that implemented Mindjet Catalyst
Simple Software, Inc.

San Francisco, CA

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CEO / Founder

April 2006 – September 2007

Mr. Robison provided contracted software development and consulting, developed the Simple Software Application Platform that provided content management systems and business process management applications to small to mid-sized businesses.
  • check_circle_outlined      GC Homes - Contractor documents and blueprints online.
  • check_circle_outlined      Bay Docs - Document preparation services and tools for generating documentation for reverse mortgages
  • check_circle_outlined      HUD Calculator - calculates potential reverse mortgage values
  • check_circle_outlined      Tzero Technology - Custom content management system
  • check_circle_outlined      Metrika - Custom content management system
Genetic Savings & Clone

Sausalito, CA

VP Engineering

June 2004 – April 2006

Genetic Savings & Clone was a genetic services company that offered commercial banking of genetic material as well as cloning services for cats. Responsible for architecting, developing and deploying Clonesoft, a bespoke business process automation software that ran every aspect of the company including employee and customer management, order tracking, tracking clone progress, and delivering the cloned pet to the customer.
  • check_circle_outlined      Cloned a cat and delivered it to customer
  • check_circle_outlined      Clonesoft - Architected and implemented web-based business process application that was used to manage the animal gene banking and feline cloning business and automated many processes.
  • check_circle_outlined      CatBank - http://www.catbank.org/ Designed and developed database driven feline DNA identification website. Back-end requirements included integration with specialized gene analysis hardware which included the Applied Biosystem Genetic Analyser 3130.
  • check_circle_outlined      Created and analized pet genotyping database, identifying 7 unique markers for traits such as Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), fur color, and polydactylism (6-toed cat).
  • check_circle_outlined      Integration with gene analysis and sequencing hardware.
  • check_circle_outlined      Retro vs. Metro - http://www.retrovsmetro.org/ Implemented all backend code for this online companion website to the New York Time's bestseller: Retro vs. Metro - The Great Political Divide in America. Required access and aggregation of various data items scattered across the Internet (such as the Iraq war dead count and real-time government deficit counter)
Inter@ctivate, Inc.

San Diego, CA

Technical Director

December 2001 – June 2004

As Technical Director for Interactivate, Inc., Mr. Robison's responsibilities were extensive and included, but were not limited to managing and maintaining IT resources including customer applications and websites. Help grow the company from 10 to 65 employees.
  • check_circle_outlined      Designed and architected network infrastructure using both Windows servers and various legacy Unix boxes. Built out server clusters and managed a farm of over 60 machines including a SAN.
  • check_circle_outlined      Designed and implemented web-based network management, monitoring & systems analysis tools
  • check_circle_outlined      Developed web-based tools for creation and maintenance of customer websites, DNS, and email services.
  • check_circle_outlined      Designed and developed email marketing application using 3 tier architecture and XML and XSLT for transporting and rendering email messages and associated web pages. As of December, 2003, the Activatemail system sends and tracks over 1,000,000 requested messages per day between 89 clients including Sunkist Growers, The California Avocado Commission, San Diego Zoo and many more.
  • check_circle_outlined      Setup automated development environment which allows Interactivate developers to create their own dedicated web sandboxes via a web interface. Automated CVS checkouts and local network mounts to development sandboxes rounded out this implementation.
  • check_circle_outlined      Installation & administration of Solaris, FreeBSD & Windows NT in a heterogeneous environment
  • check_circle_outlined      Design, implementation, migration and maintenance for Interactivate's internal and external network infrastructure.
  • check_circle_outlined      Working with vendors, developers & 3rd party integrators.
  • check_circle_outlined      Maintain and monitor over 50 hosted client web sites and dozens of web applications
  • check_circle_outlined      Identifying & resolving network related problems
  • check_circle_outlined      Responsible for backup implementation and recovery strategy & procedures
  • check_circle_outlined      Required to support high volume access & availability characteristics as well as identifying & resolving system hardware & software problems
  • check_circle_outlined      Responsible for the full availability of DNS, SMTP, HTTP, POP & IMAP servers
  • check_circle_outlined      Maintaining security for all Interactivate networks

References

Chris has a broad understanding of Internet technologies and is generous with knowledge sharing. Equally at home working with Web Services, XMPP and server-side applications as he is working with CSS, JavaScript and the most recent HTML5 for devices. He brings a lot to a Web dev team and can pinch hit in a number of chairs.
This guy has some seriously mad coding skills.
His system is well oil; all my web services are working with no downtime. He offers all the greatest gadgets, ideal environment for a programmer like me.
Extreme knowledge of Perl and UNIX environment, fast programmer, brilliant manager.

Education

  • 2009 2010

    City College of San Francisco

    Japanese, Business

  • 1988 1991

    California State University-Chico

    Computer Science

  • 1988 1990

    Butte Community College

    Computer Science, General Education

Awards

  • 1988-06-01

    Computer Science Award

    Paradise High School

Skills

Programming Languages
python JavaScript [node+browser] Swift Kotlin Rust C C++ Java Objective-C PHP Python Perl Go C# Bash and more...
Leadership
Strategic Planning Team Building Team Leadership Procedure Development Process Improvement Product Development Entrepreneurship Budgeting / Financial Planning
Software Engineering
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Software Development Microservices Architecture Scrum / Agile Mobile Application Development Cloud Services Service Integration

Languages

English Native or bilingual

Interests

Hobbies
Making stuff 3D Printing Raspberry Pi Arduino Laser engraving Electronics
Recreation
Golf Recreational Programming Karaoke

Volunteer

  • 2010-04-01-2011-04-01

    Esteemed Leading Knight / House Committee Chair

    San Francisco Elks Lodge #3