work experience

  • Yahoo! Inc. June 2006 – January 2013 Front-end engineer (3 years), senior front-end engineer (3.5 years)

    At Yahoo!, I worked on YUI Library, a popular open source offering of front-end modules and utilities used both internally by nearly all Yahoo! properties, as well as by thousands of web developers outside of the company. In my work, I wrote code in JavaScript (both client-side and server-side), ActionScript, and PHP, extensively used HTML5 and CSS3 for markup and layout, and produced content and assets in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut.

    more details

    In my first couple of years on the team, I worked on the Astra Flash platform, developing standalone UI modules for Flash applications in ActionScript. The UI modules developed as part of this platform were specifically designed to function as standalones (i.e., not as part of a larger framework) and were constructed to be lean and high-performing. Though these modules have been deprecated, they are still widely used by ActionScript developers seeking to avoid large frameworks.

    As I continued on the YUI team, I was promoted to senior engineer and expanded my range of responsibilities to a number of key utilities and modules in the library. Among the many pieces of the library I've worked on, I pioneered the hybrid use of JavaScript and Flash, which I used when designing a very popular Uploader module that appears on such high traffic websites as Flickr and Yahoo! Mail. I created a brand new Calendar module (see my talk about it), with significant size and performance improvements. I also maintained and expanded the YUI Library's internationalization utilities. Along with my development work, I also acted as an architect, architecting the highly successful YUI Charts module group (see my talk on the Charts architecture).

    In addition to my technical responsibilities, I worked in multiple capacities to popularize the work done by our team. I presented a number of well-attended and well-reviewed talks at a wide range of conferences. I ran hack days at universities all across the country. I taught a highly popular course on YUI, to both Yahoo! engineers and external developers. I ran the YUI Theater portal, recording and editing videos of lectures and talks on front-end topics. I also participated in internal Yahoo! hack days with a high degree of success, winning 7 out of the 9 times I participated.

  • Yahoo! Research Berkeley September 2005 – May 2006 Research Engineer

    At Yahoo! Research Berkeley, I worked on the team that researched new ways to present and consume time-based media. In particular, I worked on developing web-based media players that allowed collaborative tagging and remixing of video and audio content. My work involved developing wireframes for UIs and user flows as well as building both backend and front-end modules for the media tagging system. The final product of the research conducted by the group is documented in the paper International Remix: Video Editing for the Web.

  • Microsoft Corporation June 2005 – September 2005 Program Manager

    At Microsoft, I spent a summer as a program manager working on Sharepoint, an advanced content and document management system. While there, I worked on improving the printing capabilities of Sharepoint-based systems and building support for internationalized content. My tasks included interviewing current and potential users of the product, writing technical specifications for developers, wireframing userflows and user interfaces, and implementing rapid prototypes.

  • Samsung Electronics (via the Imagination USA group). June 2004 – September 2004 Engineer

    At the Imagination USA group, I designed and programmed an interactive exhibit for Samsung's then-newly opening Samsung Experience Showroom in Columbus Circle, New York City. The exhibit involved connected stations with haptic input devices that allowed two showroom attendees to collaboratively work on a visual typographic design. For this project, I wrote custom driver wrappers to accept input from the gesture recognition hardware, designed the user flow and the interface of the on-screen presentation, and wrote the server-side module that connected the two stations for collaboration.

  • Freelance Projects September 2004 – present day Front-end engineer, UI designer, graphic designer

    For the past 8 years, I have worked on a variety of freelance projects in the areas of frontend engineering, UI architecture, and graphic design. I have designed touch panel interfaces for companies as different as Toshiba and Boudin bakery, I've architected and built websites for university groups and web hosts, I've developed brand identities for companies and software projects, and I've designed posters for events and lectures. If you are interested in learning more, please review my portfolio.

education

  • Stanford University September 2004 – May 2006

    Master of Science in Computer Science, with concentration in HCI.

  • Massachusetts Institute of Techology September 2000 – June 2004

    Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
    humanities concentration in Visual Arts.

  • Design Internships (various) September 2000 – June 2004

    I've acquired a wide range of UI and graphic design skills working as a undergraduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab's Aesthetics+Computation and Physical Language Workshop groups, as a design intern at the New York's Design Machine agency, and as an engineer at the Imagination USA group.

tools

  • Web technology stack: JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, YUI. I am proficient at creating consistent cross-browser experiences, building dynamic and responsive layouts that function across multiple devices, and designing usable and high-performance interfaces.
  • Graphic design stack: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X. I have a high level of fluency in all of the major design tools, which allows me to build beautiful visual assets quickly and effectively.
  • Programming languages: JavaScript, ActionScript, PHP, Python. These are the programming languages I've used in my most recent projects, but I am not limited to them—I can learn any language needed for development of a specific project in a fairly short amount of time.

special skills

  • - Fully bilingual in Russian and English
    - Professional photographer