Matthew R. Thomas

Profile

Great software can revolutionize how people communicate & express creativity. Poor software can lead to loss of work, time, or money. Inspired by famed designer Dieter Rams, I use the following principles in an effort to create great software:

  • Understand the user and their experience & areas of expertise.
  • Be forgiving, never blame the user.
  • Be accessible by as many people as possible.
  • Be easy-to-use, but not at the expense of usefulness.
  • Be unobtrusive and honest.

Experience

Senior Enginnering Manager, URBN

(August 2018–Present)

I’m currently the senior engineering manager URBN family of stores (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters), in charge of all mobile app development. I lead a team of engineers and managers for all native mobile development. Notable contributions include:

  • Overseeing company wide initiatives including authetication, privacy solutions, inventory tracking, & membership programs.
  • Contributing to a professional development program consisting of technical training, communication, and managerial skills.
  • Working closely with brand and product teams to create first-class mobile experiences while maintaining brand uniqueness.
  • Overseeing architectural decisions including platform decisions, design patterns, and software integrations.
  • Developing a Diversity & Inclusivity initiatives with other managers. Adjusting hiring practices, team education, and communication strategies.

Enginnering Manager, URBN

(March 2016–August 2018)

I was an engineering manager for the URBN family of stores. Notable contributions include:

  • Spearheading the effort to consolidate our brand apps under one code base, reducing code duplication and lowering defect rate.
  • Mentoring developers to improve their engineering skills and leading group learning sessions.
  • Working with QA teams to develop a continuous integration workflow that includes testing for all of our development

Lead iOS Mobile Engineer, URBN

(February 2015–March 2016)

I was the lead developer for iOS in-store solution for URBN family of stores. Notable contributions include:

  • Creating a chat solution for retail associates to communicate with each other.
  • Creating sales tracking software
  • Updating and maintaining software for merchandise tracking

Lead iOS Software Developer, LayerVault

(July 2013–February 2015)

Lead developer of LayerVault for Mac, which designers use to remotely sync and collaborate on design assets. Notable contributions include:

  • Implementing sync engine to handle multiple files uploading and updating concurrently to keep the files up-to-date while minimizing resource usage.
  • Working closely with the Rails website engineers to develop a modern API for remotely syncing files between computers and a centralized server.
  • Efficiently tracking file changes and updating only changed data, rather than the whole file to minimize bandwidth usage and storage space.
  • Extracting specific art assets from design files to improve customer workflow.
  • Involvement in support conversations to better understand users’ needs.

Lead iOS Software Developer, Unbound Medicine

(November 2005–July 2013)

Working for a Palm and Windows Mobile medical software company, I advocated for releasing our software on the iPhone and became the lead developer. Notable contributions include:

  • Ported our publishing platform to iOS and used it to create and distribute 50+ medical apps to the App Store.
  • Created a centralized sync service to ensure medical information is always up-to-date.
  • Worked closely with graphic artists on the UI and interaction design, including the design language for both iOS and non-iOS apps.
  • Wrote the original mobile optimized version of the company’s web platform which was ready at the original iPhone launch.
  • Developed rich-text web-based tools for medical editors to review and edit content

Software Developer, Rochester Institute of Technology Library

(June 2004–May 2005)

At RIT’s Educational Technology Center, I led a student-run team of developers to migrate our old media and equipment inventory system to a modern web-based system. As the team leader I was responsible for managing project requirements, setting deadlines, programing, and testing the system.

Software Development CO-OP, Boeing Rotorcraft

(June 2003–November 2003)

As part of my CO-OP program, I worked on the V-22 avionic system assisting with software quality assurance testing, participating in software debugging roundtables, and investigating improvements in the software testing system.

Education

Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY

BS in Computer Science, 2005

Other Experience

Skills

  • Languages: Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, C, Java, Javascript, XML/XSLT, Ruby, PHP, Perl
  • Frameworks: UIKit, AppKit, Android, Rails
  • Databases: MySQL, SQLite
  • Other: Accessibility & Usability Design, OAuth2, Audio Programming