Kenneth Xu

Programmer, Software Architect and People Manager

West New York, New Jersey, United States

About

20+ years programming, 10+ years architecting and 9 years managing dev teams ranging from 6 to 40 members. A situational leader that manages, mentors and motivates software development teams. A practitioner of modern software development methodologies like Agile, TDD, CI and CD with great success. Possesses strong problem-solving skills and enjoys solving complex problems. Shares the knowledge with my teams and the world on blog “Program It” (Try googling “GraphicsMagick Java”, “Java TCP/IP port forwarding”, “C# high performance reflection”, and more upon request). Specialties: Java, C#, C, SQL, Object and Relational Modeling, Concurrent Programming, Data Structure, and Algorithm.

Experience

  • Amazon (12 yrs 6 mos)
    • Principal Software Development Engineer
      Jan 2017 - Present · 9 yrs 6 mos

    • Sr. Software Development Manager
      Jan 2014 - Dec 2016 · 3 yrs

      Building our next generation of eCommerce Website.

  • BarnesAndNoble.com (Greater New York City Area)
    • Director of System Integration and Tools
      Nov 2011 - Jan 2014 · 2 yrs 3 mos

      An Agile software development practitioner who leads two scrum teams; architects and designs innovative software applications to satisfy the demand of rapid growing e-reading business. Architected and designed the dynamic image resizing system to support the demand of 200M image requests per day in average; implemented an innovative solution to integration Java and GraphicsMagick with 10+ times better performance and linear scalability; worked closely with the GraphicsMagick team and added the batch/interactive feature to the code base; contributed gm4java to open source community. Architecting the next generation Enterprise Service Bus with features like linear scaling, self-monitoring, intelligent re-routing, smart retry, adaptive error logging, duplicate detection and searchable message archive; building the asynchronous messaging and services platform for Enterprise Application Integration based on ActiveMQ, Camel, CXF, logstash, Elasticsearch and other proven open source frameworks.

    • Application Development Manager
      Jan 2007 - Oct 2011 · 4 yrs 10 mos

      Manage new application development using C# .Net technology, existing application maintenance and production support covering Java web applications and a few multi-terabyte Oracle databases and ETL processes.

  • Software Consultant at JPMorgan
    Nov 2002 - Dec 2006 · 4 yrs 2 mos

    Designed and successfully implemented Global Credit Risk Management portal system. Provided signal-sign-on solution and integrate a number of risk management application under WebLogic portal infrastructure. Implemented a number of risk assessment tools and alerts. Delivered one stop user experience for accessing various credit risk information to end user.

  • Software Consultant at Barnes & Noble
    May 2000 - Oct 2002 · 2 yrs 6 mos

    A key contributor to a project migrating an ETL application from RedBrick/Informix to Oracle. Designed a reusable web framework for business reports, using XML and J2EE technology. Developed a sophisticated network daemon to provide fast speed, high concurrent, and remotely reachable ID conversion service, using C, UNIX sockets, and POSIX threads.

  • System Architect at Singapore Institute of Management
    Jan 1999 - Feb 2000 · 1 yr 2 mos

    Planned and designed the rebuild of an existing client-server application into 3-tier architecture. Remodeled database structure. Migrated data from an Informix database to an Oracle database. Designed and developed a Web application using EJB, Servlets, and JSP technology.