Nathaniel Ekoniak
http://www.nateko.com/
nathaniel@nateko.com
+1(206)659-1394


--Profile

I am a skilled Software Engineer living in Seattle, Washington with a passion for finding elegant solutions to challenging problems.  I believe in the power of computing and the internet to improve people's lives in myriad ways, from increasing the efficiency of everyday tasks to expanding recreational possibilities to providing access to educational tools in developing nations.  I strive to give my software a sound design, an efficient implementation and a consistent and intuitive interface.


--Selected Accomplishments

Co-designed and implemented, as part of a small team of developers, multiple systems for enabling and managing in-flight connectity services including internet access, live payment processing and store-and-forward-based air-to-ground connectivity.

Co-designed and implemented, as part of a small team of developers, Fourdrinier, an in-house CMS, offering a dramatic increase in the functionality, stability, compatibility and usability of The Post Online, a public website serving thousands of users.

Designed Fourdrinier's PostgreSQL database and converted and regularized years of historical data to an internally consistent format, greatly increasing the efficiency of data insertion and retrieval as well as expanding the utility of existing data.

Automated high-volume, labor-intensive data entry processes as Technical Coordinator at a branch office of America Coming Together, a voter education group, resulting in a more than ten-fold productivity increase and significant cost savings.


--Qualifications

Proficient in most areas of computing including:
- major operating systems (Mac OS X, Linux and UNIX-like environments, Windows)
- programming languages including Perl, C/C++ and PHP
- object-oriented design and other major language paradigms
- SQL and relational database design (experience with PostgreSQL and MySQL)
- dynamic/database-driven web development using PHP, (X)HTML, CSS and a back-end SQL database
- version control (CVS and SVN)
- common software including development tools and office/productivity suites
Adept at learning new software, programming languages and environments.


--Work Experience

January 2008 through present.
Software Developer, SymonTek.  Seattle, Washington.
  Developed in-flight networking solutions for use over links with high latency, limited bandwidth and intermittent connectivity.

August 2006 through August 2007.
English Language Teacher, Shibushi City Board of Education.  Kagoshima, Japan.
  Taught conversational English in elementary and junior high schools and for the Shibushi City Lifelong Learning Program.

April 2005 through July 2006.
Web Developer, The Post (http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/). Athens, Ohio.
  Worked with a small team of developers to maintain and expand The Post Online, a website serving both customers and employees.


--Education

June 2006.
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, cum laude.

September 2002 through June 2006.
Ohio University Honors Tutorial College.  Athens, Ohio.
  Major:  Computer Science
  Minors: Mathematics and Japanese

September 2004 through February 2005.
Japanese Language Study.  Chubu University.  Kasugai, Japan.


--Language Competencies

English.
  Native competency.

Japanese.
  Advanced spoken and written competency.

French.
  Working knowledge of written French, elementary conversational ability.