Dave Alger

Personal & Professional Profile

My passion is creating pixel perfect user interfaces and compelling user experiences on the web and on mobile devices.  I code for fun in my spare time and enjoy staying on the cutting edge of technology!  I've been an integral part of designing, building and testing award winning software for over 15 years and currently work at SolarWinds as a Senior Web Applications Developer.

Technical Skills

I've acquired many "technical" skills throughout the years but my inner artist still finds a way to shine through in a computer nerdy sort of way.  My dream job is one where I can continue to develop my skills in HTML5 and jQuery while designing clean and simple user interfaces that are functional in spite of the browser being used.

Although I excel in GUI Land, my skills aren't limited to just front end development.  I have worked with and designed many data warehouses over the years and find satisfaction in turning terabytes of data into beautiful business intelligence charts and reports.  Data, afterall, is only useful when it has been liberated from the backend and can be understood by us humans.

Work Experience

I took on the role of Front End Development Lead for a new HTML 5 application called Alert Central in March of 2012.  This product was designed to solve a problem that almost every single IT organization has to deal with on a daily basis; Getting alert emails to the right people, on the right team, at the right time.  Starting with zero lines of code, I was able to help architect and prove out early SPA prototypes using Sencha's extjs 4.0 framework.  Leading a small team of 3 developers, I either wrote or reviewed 100% of the Alert Central UI code base.  The end result is a single page web application that is not only beautiful but also performs well in any browser.

Alert Central is given away free of charge as a way of saying thank you to the IT community for making SolarWinds the go to software company for solving IT problems.

• Alert Central is easy to deploy as a virtual appliance so download it for free and try it out!
• One of our early adopters tweeted this which made all the attention to detail on Alert Central worth it: "@solarwinds When are you guys gonna build a beautiful UI like on Alert Central into NPM?"

The video below gives a brief overview of Alert Central

In March of 2006, I started work as part of a small but amazing engineering team at a private company called TriGeo Network Security.  During that time I helped design and build one of the best Security Information Management systems on the market.  We won multiple awards from SC Magazine and were ultimately acquired by SolarWinds in July of 2011.  In my role as Senior Developer, I spent most of my time writing low level ActionScript code to bend the Flex framework past its limitations.  I love making components that are both beautiful as well as perfomant.

• "For its power and simplicity" our product won SC Magazine's "Best Buy" Award in 2010
• I was the sole front end developer for the company's Business Intelligence product known as InSight.
• One of three core front end developer for SolarWinds Log & Event Manager.
• Won a number of awards and achievements for outstanding products and customer satisfaction.

The video below gives an overview of the UI in our award winning console

I worked at Microsoft for six years in roles such as Software Developer in Test and Test Lead.  As an integral part of two different test organizations, I developed a passion for quality and an aptitude for security.  I developed a great working relationship with many bright software engineers.

• SDET on the Office team earning two "ship-it" awards for Business Scorecard Manager and an Excel Add-in.
• Test Lead over migrating the MCP website users over to the Passport authentication system.

References

Visit my LinkedIn profile to read peer reviews and a more detailed list of work experience.