Peter J.

Potrebic
Mobile: 415-203-4006 E-mail: peter.potrebic@gmail.com

Summary Passionate and innovative engineer who brings technical and leadership skills to all aspects of product development. Models and promotes the notions software should be delightful and engineers should strive for zero defect code. Shipped production software ranging from consumer quality living room user experiences to backend scalable web platforms dealing with millions of coupons or millions of TV recordings per day.
Coupons Inc, Architect (2010-2012) Brought many modern practices, technologies, and friendly/dynamic/learning work habits to Coupons. Developed several broad components which greatly enhanced the stability/manageability of our platform. Conceived, designed, implemented a thin SOAP GET layer over our Platform APIs allowing Varnish-httpcaching on top of previously 100% uncacheable calls coming from internal and external partners. Conceived, designed, implemented an application caching layer that seamlessly combined in-process and outof-process caching (memcached) under a single API. Drove the move from SOAP to REST for our APIs and designed many of the initial RESTful APIs. Scribd Inc, Independent Contractor (2010) Designed and implemented a powerful and innovative desktop uploader and ActiveX control. Microsoft, Software Architect (1999 2009) MediaRoom architected and implemented the network DVR Scheduler (AT&Ts U-verse product). Windows MediaCenter owner/architect of the DVR Scheduler and broad pieces of the TV/DVR UX UltimateTV owned the Scheduler and broad pieces of the TV/DVR UX Be Inc, Director of Frameworks (1993-1999) Owned the main BeOS App framework. Authored many of those APIs. Managed the framework team. Apple Computer, Senior Engineer (1986-1993) Newton worked on communication stack and the IDE. MPW Macintosh Programmers Workshop worked on the main shell and source control system.

Professional Experience

Skills

Committed to the notion that an engineer and groups of engineers have primary responsibility for delivering quality and on-target software. When I arrived at Coupons Inc there was no unit test culture and zero unit tests for >1 million lines of code. There are now engineers in all parts of the org doing unit testing, primarily because of my efforts. Helped bring code reviews (with a friendly style) to Coupons. Reviewing code is a big strength of mine. My work at Scribd had no QA resources. 1000s of users of my 2 deliverables, one bug reported to date. In the 4 major releases of MediaRoom/U-verse the DVR Scheduler had 0 mandatory updates. Subsystems like EPG, VOD, Live TV, Networking had, respectively, 5, 12, 1, and 5 mandatory updates. >4 million households use U-verse, relying on the DVR Scheduler to record their favorite programs. Numerous product managers have called me the best tester they have ever seen. I developed a test framework that allowed modeling of any Mediaroom DVR Scheduler scenario. I developed a scalability test harness that could test Mediaroom DVR Scheduler under loads of 100Ks of users and arbitrary real world scenarios.

Strive for zero defect code

Innovation

Author of 31 patents. Mostly in TV/DVR feature and UX areas.

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Innovate and bring passion to areas of team development, culture, learning, cordial and energetic communication. At Coupons I started Tech Talk series and co-introduced distributed source control to a company previously using CVS. Co-created an on-line game to teach Mercurial. A Windows MediaCenter colleague said reflecting on those days I and others came to the conclusion that your specific impact on MediaCenter made that a great user experience Scribd desktop uploader adds 2 features (multiple logins & templates) to what most uploaders have (e.g. Flickr). These 2 features are elegantly integrated into entire usage model. Introduced unit testing of UX to Mediaroom. Guided an eng. to develop the first unit testable UX feature. Created a data analysis workflow analyzing real Mediaroom usage. The results shattered several long held beliefs. This also uncovered a bug in my code which I happily fixed and covered with additional unit tests! My latest annual review at Coupons had these words Peter is the conscience of engineering. I take great pride in having that phrase applied to me, first by a fellow architect, and adopted by our boss, the VP. My internal blog at Coupons is highly regarded. Covers wide variety of topics. Writing samples available. Its a wonderful gift when a engineer, product mgr, or manager tells me that I made a positive/long-lasting impact on their career. And I love to learn from everyone that I work with. An experienced engineering mgr at Coupons said I was his new gold standard for how an architect should work with developers, demonstrating a deep understanding of both the code and how to work with developers of varying abilities. Creating compelling, well written, and approachable documents is a strength, ranging from architectural documents describing a specific product or component to white papers laying out a new direction or idea. Authored a MediaCenter white paper laying the foundation on how to think about our customers and how TV ought to work. The MediaCenter VP called it the best engineering document hed ever read. A fellow architect called my MediaRoom DVR Scheduler Architecture doc. one of the best he had seen. Demo software is not a passion, but demonstrating production code, be it in early phases or complete, is. Presented an early version of a set of TV Discovery features that I had invented. The features were very well received and were put in the product pipeline. Parting comment from Scribd CTO appreciated the attention to detail, strong communication skills, and good product sense you've brought to the table. This was in product space totally new to me. At Be Inc. it was my responsibility to design and oversee development of a clean and consistent, yet powerful set of APIs. Required a vigilant eye across the eng. team and close work with technical writers.

Communication

Customer focused

Value UX whether the customer is someones mother or a developer using my API. Each has a user and an experience. APIs have a feel, good or bad. I have a proven ability to make good (great?) ones. Participated in the creation, refinement and execution of many usability tests. I have an excellent ability to uncover bias when it comes to analyzing and assessing ones own product. Have taken part in on-site/in-home visits to observe real customers using my products. I value such work. Newton was my first experience in customer focused design, the impacts of which remain to this day. Over the years created numerous white papers and UX scenarios documents. A particular skill is uncovering UX interdependencies, both positive and negative, in seemingly unrelated parts of a product. Similar skills in understanding and teasing out interdependencies in an API or design. (An API has a UX!) The JD Powers survey named MediaRoom the best IPTV DVR/TV on the market in 2008. Long background in C#. and .NET, and previously in C, C++ Solid understanding of RESTful design, Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL. Use perl as needed. Teaching myself node.js. Value all phases of developing software, from initial design to development to shipping to sustaining. Also value all the contributors to a product from PM to Test to Docs to UI design to Usability. Masters of Computer Science, Stanford University Bachelors of Science in Engineering, Princeton University

Technical

Education