KEN A COLLINS » Introduction

Seasoned self-starter with a positive 'can do' attitude who can establish your technical infrastructure, set standards, personally build the minimum viable product to get your company off the ground, and then take it to the next level.

Four Roles


Tech Lead

When you've got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But when you've got a whole toolbox, you can solve a wide range of problems.

Never content to focus on just one thing, I have amassed expertise across multiple platforms and numerous technologies, facing and resolving a myriad of technical challenges spanning hardware and software infrastructures that have eluded long-time employees at the various firms where I have been employed, and I have gained valuable insights along the way.

Call me nuts, but I love technology so much I take a two week vacation every year to be 'one with code'.

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Team Lead

You hear about IT guys who manage to keep their jobs with jargon-laced diatribes, unreadable code, and a refusal (or inability) to provide documentation. I do the opposite.

I ferociously comment code, author user's guides and technical manuals, conduct individual and classroom training, and on occasion, ghost write a senior executive's communications.

I have articulated business requirements to a team of developers, alerted upper management of schedule impacts and renegotiated deliverables, and remained involved throughout the systems development life cycle.

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Pre-/Post-Sales Engineer

Competing on price is a race to the bottom. Truly differentiating oneself calls for supporting customers both before and after the sale.

For 3 years, I traveled around the country showing IBM's latest and greatest technology at trade shows.

One live demonstration I performed led to a $1,250,000 account with a university. Another time, I saved a $6,000,000 account with a major publishing firm.

In both cases, I stayed on and provided technical support after the sales. I then provided jargon-free documentation and trained staff to take over.

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Product Engineer

With the Internet of Things (IoT) flipping old business models on their heads, manufacturers need to bring in IT talent to program sensors that can monitor their products out in the field. Before my current role—rearranging 1 and 0 in creative ways—I was an Electrical Engineer who made things.

I designed the printed circuit board layouts for a new series of digital readouts and lighted indicators. I fabricated and tested prototypes, supervised initial production runs, recommended design changes, and prepared Engineering and Manufacturing schematics detailing assembly techniques.

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Beauty is only skin deep and with software it is the user interface that catches the eye. I love developing an application's front-end utilizing any combination of the technologies below (heavy emphasis on JavaScript).

JavaScript jQuery JSON Ajax CSS3 HTML5 Bootstrap Swing @Formula

The front-end needs timely, relevant, and reliable data to deliver a rich user experience. I enjoy writing server-side code to fulfill this need.

Java EE Spring & Hibernate Python LotusScript SQL NOSQL JDBC Apache POI XML + XSLT + XSL-FO = PDF file MQSeries and HTTPS File Transfer Base64 Encoding/Decoding

The code must live somewhere. I have deployed applications on all of the platforms listed here.

SaaS WebSphere Domino SQL Server Tomcat Windows Linux UNIX Mainframe

When a text editor or filing system doesn't cut it, I rely on the tools below.

Eclipse Rational ClearCase WebSphere Administrator Console SQL Server Integration Services

Bachelor of Engineering
Electrical Engineering

Master of Science
Computer Science / Management