TL/DR: Rainmaker Product Designer and Technical Architect - Let's Build Something
Location:       United States (Connecticut)
Remote:         Available remotely as well as limited on-site work in the Northeastern United States.
Relocate:       Perhaps for a killer opportunity.
Resume:         Happy to furnish CV and references upon request.
Email:          emaildenvyl@[the company Marissa Mayer works at :)]
Technologies
There's not much I haven't had my hands on or been indirectly involved with. Lately I have been heavily involved in cloud computing (Google Cloud and AWS - the actual platform services, not just IaaS), graph databases (Titan, less experience with neo4j), ElasticSearch, various ML and CV tools, and Apache Spark. My work is at the intersection of product design and technical architecture - often I go into projects without prior hands-on experience of what we'll use in the end product.
Meet Denvyl :-)
I don't brand myself as a developer or builder per se. I am a designer. I work with my clients to understand the spirit of what they're trying to accomplish. I don't expect requirements, wireframes, or drawn out conference calls with stakeholders. The design process is an iterative one - and often you don't know what it is you're designing until you're 3/4 done designing it :-)
The best projects for me are those that I can approach from an end-to-end standpoint. I do not believe you can separate the creative process of design with the technical process of systems analysis and architecture - they are one - managing them separately or in silos spells disaster. I don't think I've ever worked a project where what we built was exactly what we envisioned on day 1 - and that's a good thing.
I work iteratively with my clients - but at the same time don't need handholding. You can be as involved as you want to be. Most of my work is done nailing the user experience. Too many products are solving really important problems yet stumble on UX - and in 2014, that spells instant death. I anticipate user needs - I don't rely on them to email it in via a feedback form. I'm a firm believer in the fact that users don't know what they want until they see it - and often it is a mistake to incorporate things like user feedback surveys too early in the process.
I'm opinionated. You can tell from reading this. I take my work very seriously and hold myself to seemingly impossible quality standards. Depending on the stage of your company we may time box certain activities (you can spend as long as you want noodling with an on boarding process - when what we actually need to do is get a working prototype out in the field for your sales guys to demo).
You want to contact me if:
-You have an early stage product concept or idea
-You feel that user experience and design will be key competitive differentiators
-You're not afraid to explore otherwise non-obvious solutions to the problem(s) you're trying to solve
-You want a guy who's going to treat your work with the same care and integrity as his own