Lance Cleveland
Dad. Explorer. Rum Lover. Code Geek.
Lance Cleveland
Lance Cleveland
Entrepreneur | Coder | Tech Writer
Being a serial technology entrepreneur has led me on quite an adventure. I have stories to tell, code to craft, and more adventures ahead of me. Join me on the journey and hang on -- it's going to be an interesting ride.
Résumé
Experience
Charleston Software
d/b/a Store Locator Plus®
Founder
2012 – Present
A successful freemium locator plugin and SaaS application using WordPress as an application foundation. Intimately involved in every aspect of product launch, maintenance, and development. Contributor to WordPress Core and Documentation. Corporate-level WordCamp sponsor for Atlanta, Charleston, and Orlando.
Key Duties:
- Company direction and strategy
- Application architecture, design, and development
- Defining and executing quality control and testing
- Leading marketing and brand awareness, site development and styling
- Documentation and assisting support
Akamai Innovations
Chief Technology Officer
2017 – Present
Managing Information Technology and Research & Development for a medical marketing company in Monterey CA. Served critical role in stabilizing technology assets after sudden departure of prior CTO. Implemented modern security and service reliability standards with a team of remote workers.
Key Duties:
- Setting system security & reliability standards.
- Ensure uptime and performance of 600+ web properties.
- Architect & implement tools to facilitate large scale website management.
- Created CI/CD and deployment repository standard for development/staging/live code and DB updates.
- Lead architect & developer for PHP and JavaScript WordPress modifications.
Skyword
Technical Writer
2017 – 2019
Technical writer for Skyword. Contracted to write several articles per month about Jetpack. Articles are user-friendly introductions to complex technical topics.
My Duties:
Cyber Sprocket Labs
Founder
2005 – 2012
Founder of a developers-for-hire business that grew from 2 people to 20 people in less than 5 years. $3.5M in annual contracts with organizations and companies that included the USAF, Billboard Magazine, Tommy Hilfiger, USA Football as well as many local Charleston clients.
My Duties:
- Corporate direction and strategy
- Sales and marketing
- Recruiting and vetting top-tier technical talent
- Software Engineer (Linux, Windows, Mobile, micro controllers, web)
Prior Accomplishments
Entrepreneur | Software Engineer
1980s – 2005
A self-taught programmer with a life-long passion for writing code and learning everything possible about computer science. Started entrepreneurial career in mid-20s with a successful eCommerce company. Launched several successful products and open source projects over the past couple of decades.
Notable Events:
- Published PostgreSQL Handler for Perl – popular database interface ported into a half-dozen languages
- Founder, Charleston Software Associates – independent software and eCommerce consultant
- Successful exit of The Lobster Net for just under $1M
- Launched The Lobster Net – Time Magazine Best Sites To Shop Online 1992 & 1993
- Founder, ProActive Web Marketing – Luxury Goods eCommerce
- Pioneered foundation for SQL soundex() function while at Recital while working under contract for HP and Oracle.
- Senior Software Engineer, Recital Corporation – 4GE and RDBMS
- BS Computer Science + Applied Mathematics, UMass Lowell
Skills
Over 25 years software engineering experience. Coding projects in PHP, Perl, Python, C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. WordPress Core contributor, plugin and theme developer. Strong Linux system admin and solid knowledge of Windows servers. Well versed in relational databases with a recent focus on MySQL and PostgreSQL. Corporate, team, and project leadership in various process methodologies including Agile/Scrum.
Currently active with the following technologies:
- Programming: PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, Node, Grunt, REST, AJAX
- Design: HTML, CSS, Sass, Foundation, Vue
- Versioning & Deployment: git, gitflow, CI/CD, Beanstalk App, Bitbucket
- Tech Stack: AWS EC2, RDS, S3, ELB, EFS, EBS, CloudFront
- Sysadmin: Apache, nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP + FPM, bash, zsh, oPcache, Redis
- Quality Assurance: phpUnit, Selenium IDE, Selenium Webdriver
- Project Management: Slack, Teams, Trello