See highlights in my resume.

Professional Profile

A Ph.D. technical leader with over 20 years of experience in computer networking, network security, and full-stack web app development. Previous CTO accomplishments include scaling the team by 10 times and increase revenue by 4 times.

Leadership Skills

  • Restructured the engineering team into small crews: growing by ten times.
  • Moved to a serverless architecture: reducing infrastructure costs by 7.4 times.
  • Implemented agile dev processes: reduced deployment interval from weeks to hours.

Technical Skills

Research Skills

  • Designed and implemented in-memory data structures to speed up query execution: compared to SQL, faster by 190 times.
  • Showed experimentally with hundreds of machines in a data center that previous claims about the performance of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are misleading.
  • Developed P2P protocols for high-performance server deployments and updates in data centers; reduced data distribution times on data centers by 41 times.
  • Designed, implemented, and evaluated a P2P network architecture including a network device and application server; reduced costly Internet traffic by 40 times.
  • Developed an API for adding functionality to a programmable router, including core plugins for forwarding, counting, and filtering packets.
  • Extensive experience in performance evaluation including experimental design.
  • Proficiency in a range of programming languages: VHDL, assembly, C/C++, Python, Bash, PHP, and JavaScript.

Education

2009–2012

Ph.D. Computer Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

2006–2009

M.S. Computer Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

2002–2005

B.S. Computer Science and Mathematics, Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX

Experience

2020–present

Software Development Manager, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Build AWS Accounts for all customers to create accounts and access other services.

2017–2020

CTO, DTI Management. Built and scaled the engineering team for a $300MM/year enterprise: reaching the breakeven point.

2017–2020

CTO, 1Ticket.com. Scaled dev team by five times in five months for a B2B ticket distribution platform: increasing revenue by four times in three years.

2016–2020

CEO, Inktie, Inc. Built an online platform for small newspapers to increase online revenue by sharing content.

2018–2020

Adjunct Professor, University of the District of Columbia. Taught web development and network security.

2017–2018

Visiting Assistant Professor, University of the District of Columbia. Taught web development, network security, and cloud computing.

2017–2017

Software Engineer, 1Ticket.com. Migrated to a serverless, microservice architecture on AWS: reduced costs by 7.4 times.

2014–2017

Assistant Professor, University of the District of Columbia. Taught advanced web development, network security, cryptography, security in cloud computing, and scalable cloud computing.

2012–2014

Senior R&D Engineer. Designed and developed algorithms and data structures to that detect anomalous behavior of millions of devices.

2009–2012

Ph.D. Thesis. "Network Efficiency in Peer-to-peer Data Distribution."

2009–2012

Teaching Assistant, Washington University. Lectured in graduate and undergraduate courses in computer architecture and system software.

2008

Technical Intern. Intel. Developed novel methods and tools for IO-performance analysis of enterprise applications.

2007–2012

Research Assistant, Washington University. Characterized the network performance of peer-to-peer applications and prototyped novel systems to improve it.

2007–2012

Research Associate, Washington University. As a member of the Applied Research Lab (ARL), developed application frameworks for a remotely accessible networking laboratory.

2005–2006

Programmer, New Media Gateway. Designed and implemented web application frameworks including a scalable, statistics package.

2004

Developer Intern, Sheppard Air Force Base. Designed and developed an index of digital course materials for pilot training.

2003, 2004

Lab Assistant, Midwestern State University. Provided technical support for students in the Computer Labs.

2002

Teacher, Dominica Grammar School, Dominica, West Indies. Taught secondary school mathematics.

2001–2002

Web Developer, FreeStyle Inc. Led a web development team.

2001–2015

Entrepreneur, Build a platform to increase online revenue for small newspapers.

Awards

2006–2011

Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship, Washington University in St. Louis

2008

Goodie Drawer Award (for timely and relevant analyses), Intel

2005, 2006

Problem Solver Award, New Media Gateway Inc.

2005

President’s Medal, Midwestern State University

2005

Honors Program Graduate, Midwestern State University

2005

Outstanding Computer Science Student, Midwestern State University

2005

Outstanding Mathematics Student, Midwestern State University

Service

2016

Speaker, Caribbean Students Organization, Midwestern State University

2016

Distinguished Guest, Midwestern State University Commencement

2016

Speaker, Chancellor’s Fellowship Conference and Reunion

2016

Panelist, ATARC Federal Cloud Computing Summit

2014–2016

Member of CSIT Graduate Admissions Committee, UDC

2014–2016

Member of Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, UDC

2015

Organizer, Department of Homeland Security CMSI-UDC event

2015

Advisor, NSF LSAMP program, Bradley Erickson

2014–2015

Advisor, M.S. Thesis/Project, Sophia Anderson

2013

Speaker, Future Faculty Career Exploration Program, RIT

2012

Reviewer,  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN)

2010, 2011

Chaperon, Target Hope conference for underrepresented minorities

2011

Speaker, Technical Research Exhibition, 37th NSBE convention

2011

Presenter, Technical Research Exhibition, 37th NSBE convention

2011

Speaker, Chancellor's Fellowship Dinner,  Washington University

2011

Reviewer,  IEEE Networking and Internet Symposium (ICC 2011)

2006–2010

Web Site Administrator, Chancellor's Fellowship, Washington University

2010

Presenter, Target Hope Conference, Washington University

2010

Cook, Feed St. Louis, Centenary Cares

2009

Presenter, Graduate Research Symposium, Washington University

2008–2009

President, Graduate Student Association, Washington University

2008

Founding  Member, Washington University Technology Entrepreneurs

2008

Judge, Graduate Research Symposium, Washington University

2008

Speaker, Ph.D. Visitor’s Day, Washington University

2008

Panelist, Graduate Panel, National Society of Black Engineers’ (NSBE)

2007–2008

Vice President, Graduate Student Association, Washington University

2007

Speaker, Chancellor’s Fellowship Recruitment, Washington University

2005

Public Relations Officer, Math Club, Midwestern State University

Memberships

2014–present

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

2008–2016

National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)

Certifications

2017

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

2017

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate

2017

AWS Certified Developer - Associate

2016

MITx 15.390.1x, Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?

Publications

Shakir James and Jason Knieriem. 1Ticket Leadership on Scalability, Automation, and Enabling the Flip Economy. In AWS Startups Blog, Feb 2020.

Shakir James and Patrick Crowley. Experimental Analyses of Data Distribution on Data Center Networks. In Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Thirteenth International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P), Trento, Italy, Sep 2013 (19% acceptance rate, 18/94).

Shakir James and Patrick Crowley. Fast Content Distribution on Datacenter Networks. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS '11), Brooklyn, NY, Oct 2011 (18% acceptance rate, 31/172).

Shakir James. Network Efficiency in Peer-to-peer Data Distribution. Washington University in St. Louis, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2012.

Shakir James and Patrick Crowley. IMP: ISP-Managed P2P. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P),  Delft, Netherlands, Aug 2010 (22% acceptance rate, 27/121).

Shakir James and Patrick Crowley. TnT: transparent network tracker for P2P applications. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS '10), La Jolla, CA, Oct 2010 (18% acceptance rate, 32/178).

Shakir James and Patrick Crowley. ISP managed peer-to-peer. In  Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and  Communications Systems (ANCS '09), Princeton, NJ, Oct 2009 (21% acceptance rate, 32/150).

Charlie Wiseman, Jonathan Turner, Michela Becchi, Patrick Crowley, John DeHart, Mart Haitjema, Shakir James, Fred Kuhns, Jing Lu, Jyoti Parwatikar, Ritun Patney, Michael Wilson, Kenneth Wong and Dave Zar. A Remotely Accessible Network Processor-Based Router for Network Experimentation. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and  Communications Systems (ANCS '08), San Jose, CA, Nov 2008 (23% acceptance rate, 30/131).

Shakir James. Performance Evaluation of the Advanced Network Tracker for BitTorrent, Computer Science Department, Washington University in St. Louis, 2008.  

Shakir James. OSPF Extensions for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks, Computer Science Department, Washington University in St. Louis, 2008.

Shakir James. Web single sign-on systems, Computer Science Department, Washington University in St. Louis, 2007.

Unlisted: numerous graduate and postgraduate presentations, including journals clubs and departmental research seminars.