Sam Zurcher

Summary

Senior Software Engineer with focus on Java, Javascript, Scrum, and technical interviews. Some experience with Ruby, Ruby on Rails, TDD, and technical coaching.
I'm comfortable working in an international environment as I have studied and worked in Europe, North America, and Asia. I'm very comfortable speaking English because it is one of the two languages spoken in our family. I always look forward to challenges to further my knowledge and skills.

Professional Experience

1. Senior Software Engineer Swisscom (Schweiz) AG January 2013 - Present Zurich, Switzerland

   Software Engineer in the Delivery Center Online Order (Neo). Neo is the new order entry replacing eOrders (see below). Neo is developed by approximately 25 people. Based on JSF and closely integrated with Siebel using aMind.

   Achievements

   • Observing, conducting, and evaluating pair programming interviews.
   • Contributing questions for the Neo Academy. The academy is supposed to help people to get started faster with Neo.
   • Active participation in process definition to accommodate the growing team.
   • Implementation of performance improvements.

2. Senior Software Engineer Swisscom (Schweiz) AG April 2011 - December 2012 Zurich, Switzerland

   Software Engineer in the Delivery Center Online Order (eOrders). For more information, check description for 2008-2011.

   Achievements

   • Conducting over 20 pair programming interviews with potential external and internal candidates (2010 - present)
   • Introducing the eOrders academy: A set of tasks a new team member has to complete when starting in our team. Helps to expedite the integration of new team members and saves the time of the existing team members. Highly relevant as on an average, we exchange approximately half of our team members after a year.
   • Introducing Selenium Grid on Amazon EC2. Decreasing execution time of the selenium test suite from 1h+ to less than 20 minutes. Direct positive impact on development as this reduces the duration of the feedback loop dramatically.Together with Thomas Arni and Franziska Meyer.
   • Introducing change set analysis for selenium tests. Given a change set, we can calculate which selenium tests are potentially affected and run only those. Reduces execution time of selenium tests. Together with Michael Qvortrup.
   • Introducing an in-app tutorial for the Product Availability Checker.
   • Presenting our continuous integration and web tests infrastructure in two internal brown bag talks.

3. Co-Founder / CTO Horizobu AG August 2008 - Present Zurich, Switzerland

   Together with Werner Hartmann, we started building Horizobu in 2008. Since then, the following took place:

   • Developing ideas for an alternative search engine. (with Werner Hartmann)
   • Implementing a prototype of the search engine. Technology stack: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JQuery, Heroku.
   • User testing the prototype version (Werner Hartmann with others)
   • Implementing a production version. Technology stack: Java 6, Spring 3.0, Tomcat, nginx, Guava, JUnit, Apache Commons, Memcached, Javascript, JQuery, Google Closure Library, Google Closure Compiler, JsTestDriver, AWS EC2, AWS S3, AWS SimpleDB, AWS Elastic MapReduce, scalr.net, Apache Hadoop.
   • User testing the production version (Werner Hartmann with others)
   • Getting the support by UI designers (fuklab.org) and including a new design (with Werner Hartmann and fuklab.org)
   • Implementing versions of Horizobu for additional languages.
   • Implementing a version of Horizobu for the stackoverflow properties.

4. Software Engineer Swisscom (Schweiz) AG January 2008 - April 2011 Zurich, Switzerland

   Software Engineer in the Delivery Center Online Order (eOrders). eOrders allows customers, 3rd party and Swisscom agents to order Swisscom wireline products. eOrders is developed by a team of approximately eight (2008) to 16 (2012) people. Since mid of 2008, the eOrders team has transformed into a Scrum team. We are using the following technologies:

   • Java 6
   • JBoss / Tomcat
   • Struts 1.2
   • JUnit / Selenium / Selenium Grid / EC2
   • Javascript / JQuery / JsTestDriver
   • Drools
   • Guava / Apache Commons

   Achievements

   • Implementing a system monitoring tool (together with Thomas Kausch).
   • Introducing Drools, JQuery, and JsTestDriver (together with Patrick Ruckstuhl).
   • Improving the existing development setup by using an SSD and a virtual image. clean-build time improved by a factor five to ten and therefore our development speed increased substantially. Together with other team members.
   • Introducing and conducting technical pair programming interviews. Besides the traditional interviews, both external and internal candidates have a three hour technical pair programming interview. During that interview, candidates have to navigate an existing project environment and solve a task in that environment. During the interview, we try to assess current knowledge and experience, potential for development, problem solving skills, getting things done, and cultural fit.
   • Talk on how we introduced Scrum in our team (Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Together with Christian Heldstab, Christian Wieland, Patrick Ruckstuhl, and Frank Beeh.
   • Winning of the Swisscom Champion Award 2010 for development of the Swisscom Produktassistent. Together with Raimond Reichert, Roger Fuhrer, Massoud Abbaszadeh, and Stefan Ruetimann.

5. ICT Specialist Helvetas April 2007 - November 2007 Samtse, Bhutan

   Advising and supporting lecturers and staff of the Samtse College of Education in the areas of computer infrastructure, computer network, computer literacy, and programming.

   Achievements

   • Organizing and conducting classes in computer literacy for non-teaching staff of the college.
   • Repairing and installing second hand computers and making them available for the lecturers, staff, and students.
   • Setting up computer labs in both the girls' and boys' hostels including wiring for the internet connection. Thanks to the labs in the hostels, more students got access to the computers more frequently and it made a real difference to them.
   • Introducing and organizing peer feedback system between the lecturers teaching Functional IT. Organizing weekly peer feedback meetings and encouraging lecturers to observe each others classes.
   • Creating a web-based system for publication of student results. Conducting requirements analysis together with the staff of the Samtse College of Education. Implementation in Ruby on Rails. www.rubexamresults.com
   • Creating a web-based system for anonymous student feedback for different classes and various units / subjects. Conducting requirements analysis together with Helvetas and staff of the Samtse College of Education. Implementation in Ruby on Rails. Available on Samtse College of Education intranet.
   • Organizing and conducting an ICT Workshop for lecturers of the Samtse College of Education and the Paro College of Education at the Samtse College of Education. Continuation of the workshop in 2006. Workshop focus on Javascript. Duration: 1 week.

   Part of the STEP project. In collaboration with Swiss Civil Service.

6. ICT Specialist Helvetas April 2006 - November 2007 Samtse, Bhutan

   Advising and supporting lecturers and staff of the Samtse College of Education in the areas of computer infrastructure, computer network, computer literacy, and programming.

   Achievements

   • Configuring and introducing storage server for all students.
   • Switching from lease line to satellite connection.
   • Installing a new proxy server.
   • Strengthening a student infrastructure support group.
   • Establishing network connections (wired and wireless) in the lecturer cubicles.
   • Establishing laptop workplaces in the lecturer cubicles.
   • Computer lab maintenance & technical support for staff.
   • Redesign of web page for the college and the distance education of the college
   • Analysis of moodle installation and distance education resource centers.
   • Teaching a semester of Functional IT to one class of teacher trainees.
   • Organizing and conducting an ICT Workshop for lecturers of the two Colleges of Education at the Paro College of Education. Subjects included introduction to programming with Kara, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Duration: 2 weeks.

   Part of the STEP project. In collaboration with Swiss Civil Service.

7. Intern Google June 2005 - October 2005 Mountain View, CA, United States

   Internship. Development in Java. Supervised by Jay Han / Heike Schmitz.

8. Hilfsassistent SwissEduc August 2000 - August 2004 Zurich, Switzerland

   Tasks included executing daily duties, supporting content masters in technical aspects of their work, and collaborating with others to further develop SwissEduc. 10%-20% job.

Projects

1. Development of Munterbunt Munterbunt August 2000 - August 2004 Baden, Switzerland

   Orelias is a Java-based framework for presenting web-based snippet collections. Munterbunt is based on Orelias and is a web-based math exercise collection. Orelias has the ability to process snippets in LaTeX. Started as a school project and continued during free time.
   Together with Remo Meier, Raimond Reichert, Werner Hartmann.

2. Development of LegoKara LegoKara March 2000 - July 2000 Baden, Switzerland

   LegoKara was developed as a part of a school project together with Remo Meier, supported by Werner Hartmann and Raimond Reichert.
   LegoKara was presented at several teacher education lectures by Remo Meier and Sam Zurcher at ETHZ (10/20/2000, 03/28/2001, 09/25/ 2001).
   Together with Remo Meier, Raimond Reichert, Werner Hartmann.

Continuous Education

• 2013: One day conference: StartupCamp Switzerland Basel, Switzerland
• 2013: Four hour workshop on Sketching; conducted by Sandro Strebel, Zuehlke. Zurich, Switzerland
• 2012: Three day conference: "Jazoon: International conference on the modern art of Software" Zurich, Switzerland
• 2011: Three day conference: "Jazoon: International conference on the modern art of Software" Zurich, Switzerland
• 2010: Three day workshop on "Java Server Faces", Swisscom Zurich, Switzerland
• 2009: One week workshop on "Core Spring". Eberhard Wolff, SpringSource GmbH Zurich, Switzerland
• 2009: Two day workshop on "Application Security", Swisscom Zurich, Switzerland
• 2009: Four day workshop on "Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0". Digicomp Zurich, Switzerland
• 2007: Two day workshop on "Gruendung eines Kleinunternehmens" Zurich, Switzerland

Presentations

• 11/27/2012: Centralway Factory: Scrum@Swisscom - Lessons Learned Zurich, Switzerland
• 11/01/2012: Java User Group Switzerland: Web Tests in the Cloud Zurich, Switzerland
• 10/30/2012: Java User Group Switzerland: Web Tests in the Cloud Luzern, Switzerland
• 09/06/2011: internet-briefing.ch: horizobu Zurich, Switzerland
• 06/25/2004: HSW Luzern: Web Site Optimization and Web Spam Luzern, Switzerland
• 11/04/2000: ETH Zurich: "Playful and Webbased Introduction in Programming" @ "Teaching with New Media". Together with R. Reichert. Zurich, Switzerland

Honors and Awards

• 2010: Swisscom Champion Award

Languages

• English (Full professional proficiency)
• German (Native or bilingual proficiency)
• French (Elementary proficiency)
• Spanish (Elementary proficiency)
• Italian (Elementary proficiency)

Personal