Dru Sellers

Resume

Application developer with over 20 years of broad business and technical expertise. Experience is focused on building and architecting distributed .Net applications

Work Experience

Message Aid messageaid.com

Founder
April 2022 - Present

Building and providing a SaaS based tool that helps teams managed MQ based systems

One More Cloud, Inc. omc.io

President & Chief Operations Officer
July 2020 - March 2022

Worked closely with the head of sales to build out a unique product offering that would help companies better manage their search infrastructure. In the process of working with the head of sales we were able to increase the average deal size from $500/mth to $8,000/mth

Worked closely with the CEO to explore various modern ways to run a business including the deployment of a 4 day work week, aggresively limiting the number of meetings and exploring options for async communication.

Vice President of Operations
March 2017 - July 2020

I choose this opportunity because it would allow me to explore a position in a company's leadership. For years I've been reading books on business startegy and leadership. I will now be in the position to both exercise that knowledge and realize just how much I have to learn.

During this time I dived deep into how search engines work. Even going so far as to contribute some simple features to the Tantivy library. This gave me a fundamental understanding of inverted indicies. Which removed another "magical" layer of how computers work.

Learned how to operate and managed 8,000 plus servers in AWS and Google clouds.

Working closely with the CEO and Head of Sales we developed a pricing model that allowed us to take advatage of our new automated provisioning process leading to a better understanding of our cost model, and our customers needs.

The first task was to automate the process of provisioning our customer's clusters. The project successfully reduced the time for custom clusters from two days to 15 minutes.

Motorsport Aftermarket Group maggroup.com

Software Architect II
September 2014 - March 2017

While at MAG, I worked with a distributed team located across the country to build a multi-tenant fulfillment layer on top of two different ERP systems allowing the heterogeneous environment of a $1 billion multi-divison company to transition to the new ERP as it made business sense.

I choose this opportunity becaues it would allow me to reexplore the larger Enterprise Architecture concepts that only show up in large companies. Additionally, it would build on top of my fulfillment domain knowledge that I started with V23 Athletics and Amplifier. Lastly, I would have the pleasure of finally working with some long time friends.

V23 Athletics

Co-Owner
February 2012 - December 2015

I was part of a small team that built a small, local athletic apparel company.

I embarked on this journey to try and get a different perspective on the software development lifecycle. Being the one that has to make the large and sometimes boring decisions. How will that impact the company's bottom line? What all do we REALLY need? Its was a great process of exploring and understanding all aspects of running a business.

Amplifier amplifier.com

Senior Software Engineer
November 2013 - September 2014

I worked closely with a small team to produce and support Amplifier.com. My responsibilities include product feature work, support, and product analysis.

I choose to take this job because I would be working on problems that involved the 'real' world. Amplifier ships products around the world and having actual people and physical plants involved in the process brings about new and unique challenges.

Dovetail Software dovetailsoftware.com

Senior Software Engineer
April 2011 - November 2013

I worked closely with a small team to produce and support the Dovetail Employee Engagement Suite. My responsibilities included product feature work, mentoring staff, providing technical architecture direction, streamlining deployments and UI work.

I choose to take this job because of the team's reputation for a high commitment to software development quality, an intense focus on testing, and compositional programming. I was pushed to grow as a developer, and in return I was able to bring the architectural and people skills from my former position.

Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka fhlbtopeka.com

Solution Architect
May 2007 - April 2011

I worked with the Enterprise Architect to plan and build over 90 different internal applications to support various business processes; including a data warehouse, various data retention plans, and several line of business applications. I supervised the code quality of 15 different developers to make sure our software principles were maintained while still meeting the business’ need for applications to be delivered. As a staff position I had to provide a business value reason for most of my recommendations, rather than direct edicts.

I choose this job because I would be leading a team of developers in producing software that managed $56 billion in assets. While at the bank, I was pushed to explain technical concepts in terms that CXOs and VPs could understand, while at the same time making sure technical decisions were in lock step with the business’s long term goals.

Education

Baker University bakeru.edu

Bachelors of Arts in International Business
with a minor in Economics
Fall 1997 - Spring 2001

Community Activities

Presenter at local, regional, and international conferences on software development practices
Recognized as a INETA Community Champion Q2 2010 for my OSS work
Avid contributor to and maintainer of open source projects
Member of local .Net user groups.
Trustee to my fraternity 2005 - 2011
Member of the Baker University Alumni Board 2007-2011