Lee R. Boynton

lee@boynton.com

Record of individual and team contribution to technology/product advancements that have directly established corporate competitiveness in emerging markets. Experienced in designing large scale data handling services, building object-oriented and functional development tools and languages, architecting interactive time-based media systems; designing reusable software components; designing GUI's; designing peer-to-peer networking software and applications, and securing large scale infrastructure. Involvement in strategic product planning and the implementation/management of programs including market analysis, product specification, user requirements, and all aspects of design/development.

Amazon - November 2017 to present

Amazon - Earth's Most Customer-centric Company.

Selected in 2021 as Principal Engineer, Amazon Distribution and Fulfillment Services (ADFS).

Selected in 2017 as Principal Engineer, Fullfillment By Amazon (FBA).

Yahoo! - April 2006 to October 2017

Yahoo - Making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. Led a number of proprietary projects, a few of which have been made open source:

Athenz - a scalable RBAC system that supports decentralized enforcement and cross-domain trust scenarios.
RDL - Resource Description Language, to define APIs and data structures in a language-independent way.

Selected in 2016 as Fellow, VP Architecture in the Science and Technology group at Yahoo, with a focus on infrastructure and security.

Selected in 2012 as Distinguished Architect/Technologist in the Science and Technology group at Yahoo, with a focus on API design tools.

Selected in 2006 as Chief Architect of Content Platforms at Yahoo with a focus on content representation and workflow across both synchronous and asynchronous processing systems.

PacketHop - 2004 to April 2006

PacketHop (a spinoff of SRI International) provides mesh networking software, including software to address homeland security and emergency response markets.

Selected in 2004 as Distinguished Engineer at PacketHop. Responsible for the overall architecture of PacketHop software. including mission critical middleware for distributed data sharing and chat/video/mapping applications to run on the mesh network.

SEVEN Networks - 2001 to 2003

Seven provides software that makes it possible for mobile operators to offer turnkey wireless data services to enterprises.

Selected in 2002 as the first Distinguished Engineer at SEVEN. Designed C++ libraries used across Windows Server, Windows Desktop, PocketPC, Palm, Symbian, Solaris and Linux platforms. Used as an underpinning to Seven's smart device client programs and enterprise connectivity solutions.

Responsible for a mechanism that provides for multiplexed multiple-key encrypted streaming protocol that allows end-to-end encryption for a user's personal data, while simultaneously providing for point-to-point encryption for operator-visible connection management metadata.

Designed and implemented the "Slingshot" product, a cobrandable and patented connector from enterprise desktops to the carrier network. Deployed as Sprint's PCS Business Connection "Personal Edition" product.

Selected in 2001 as Software Architect at SEVEN to develop wireless technology. Developed the Java-based framework for System Seven's operator-deployed servers, an object oriented persistence layer for a relational database, interprocess communications with language-neutral data marshaling, cluster management protocol. Designed and architected the operator-deployed server cluster called "Sphinx" based on this architecture. Deployed in several operator trials, and deployed as part of Sprint's PCS Business Connection "Enterprise Edition", DoCoMo's "Binwan" service, and others.

WebMD - 1997 to 2000

WebMD is an Internet-based healthcare network that connects physicians, hospitals, third-party payers, and consumers to a virtual world of medical information, tools, and services. Acquired in January 1999 by WebMD, Sapient Health Network was a free online health community providing personalized information and support for people with chronic illness.

Selected in 2000 as Principal Engineer at WebMD to continue a leadership position in all technical details of the WebMD consumer web portal. Responsible for developing roadmaps for web page delivery, content distribution architecture, search technology, and message board technology to rationalize the variety of technologies resulting from multiple company mergers and acquisitions. Continued development of WebMD's consumer web portal and its architectural underpinnings (developed at Sapient Health Network).

Selected in 1998 as Software Architect at Sapient Health Network to develop new technology for a community-oriented web site, its supporting three-tier architecture, and supporting content production tools. The proprietary technology supports dynamic XML-based page compositing and site structure management with multiple style templates, and keyword and exemplar searching across multiple content sources.

Creative Multimedia Corporation - 1994 to 1996

CMC, an interactive multimedia information developer and publisher, was acquired in 1998 by Ledge Multimedia

Selected in 1996 as Senior Software Architect to research and develop new technology for the companies CD-ROM, Web, and Hybrid products. Reported to Director of Engineering. Responsible for technology research and development for all CMC products.

Developed a complete application framework for CD-ROM titles. Written in both C++ and Java. It is layered and can be utilized for server software as well as GUI client development. Incorporates a system portability layer enabling "no source change" to port between Windows, Macintosh, and Unix platforms. The Java port includes a complete, high quality OS abstraction provided in both native libraries and COM object form. Integrates 3rd party components like video and JPEG decompression. This framework reduced development time and improved stability for several award-winning products and web sites. Development of robust, dynamic resource model allowing the UI as well as content to change over time. Also allows easy localization.
Development of proprietary database, optimized for CD-ROM and Web Hybrid applications. Support arbitrary data types (including all media types), as well as fully indexed searching capabilities.
Responsible for the MPEG adaptation of all products.

Selected in 1994 as Technical Director of the BlockBuster Video Guide to Movies and Videos CD-ROM. Reported to VP of Engineering. Responsible for all technical aspects of this CD-ROM product. The product shipped on time with a 6 month development cycle, and won the IICS Interactive Summit gold medal in the "Information Reference" category in 1995.

FirstPerson (a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems) - 1993 to 1994

A wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, FirstPerson was created to explore new opportunities and position a new technology called Oak - now known as Java - in the consumer electronics marketplace.

Selected as Software Engineering Lead to perform key role in defining and guiding development of advanced products. Report to Director of Engineering. Responsible for: designing and implementing overall architecture for all reusable class libraries written in Java; realizing implementations for new user interface concepts; developing coherent application model supportable by various development tools.

Designed completely new application framework for animation-oriented multimedia titles. Created new architecture amenable to both graphical construction tools and end-user scripting, which handled synchronization of video, sounds, and user interaction. Developed technique for automatically managing multimedia resources on both local disk and network.
Designed new set of foundation classes to leverage technology in reusable way. Many of those classes (String, Character, Enumeration, Vector, and others) are still shipping as part of the Java Development Kit. Specified several important changes to the Java language, enabling improved class library design.

NeXT Computer - 1988 to 1993

Originally started as a hardware/software system company manufacturing high capacity workstations targeted at the education market, in 1993 NeXT evolved into a software-only company centered around NeXTStep, an object-oriented end-user and developer system, retargeted at the corporate marketplace. In 1998, NeXT was acquired by Apple Computer, where much of the technology continues to be used.

Selected in 1993 as Advanced Technology Engineer to fulfill CEO's goal of developing and integrating multimedia technology into the NeXTStep operating environment. Responsible for all aspects of audio/video synchronization for NeXTTIME, a multimedia framework. Also responsible for multimedia integration with the Application Kit and the operating system.

Selected to develop demonstration of new multimedia technology for direct use by CEO Steve Jobs in initial introduction and subsequent trade shows.
Designed and implemented all aspects of sound, achieving high quality compressed stereo sound that synchronized with software video decompression.
Wrote loadable kernel servers, leveraged facilities of underlying Mach operating system to precisely control scheduling of multiple threads, and implemented drop frame algorithms that kept audio and video synced up while continuously playing from disk or network.

Selected in 1991 as Manager, Interpersonal Computing Group to oversee development of applications integral to NeXT's continuing transition from education to corporate marketplace. Reported to Vice President of Software. Directed 5 engineers. Responsible for day-to-day management of group with members located in both California and Paris, France.

Collaborated with product marketing group to help define Release 3.0, a major product containing many new features.
Assured on-time or ahead-of-schedule completion of multiple development projects including InterfaceBuilder, ProjectBuilder, WorkspaceManager, Mail, Preferences, and LoginWindow.
Managed initial prototype of ISDN implementation, the new store-and-forward architecture for Mail, and public key encryption for both the Mail and WorkspaceManager products.

Selected in 1988 as Software Engineer to develop and deploy new technology contributing to initial and subsequent releases of NeXTStep software.

Designed and implemented major portions of WorkspaceManager 2.0; contributed as member of a team of 3 in designing new user interface, architecting the application, writing 60,000 lines of Objective C code, and successfully shipping product in only 10 months.
Co-authored NeXT's Distributed Object System (US Patent 5481721).
Architected and implemented NeXTStep's drag-and-drop system, enabling easy and flexible data exchange between and within applications.
Architected and implemented NeXTStep Sound Kit, and object-oriented toolkit for the recording, playback, viewing, and editing of sound; integrated into InterfaceBuilder and Mail.
Wrote major portions of InterfaceBuilder 1.0, including complete subsystems for sound, menu editing, and project management.
Developed NeXTStep's menu system, including several prototypes and the final product.
Authored 3.0 MIDI driver achieving double the performance of the previous driver and eliminating many annoying problems.

Other Experience - 1982 to 1988

Firmware Engineer - Tektronix: Led team in designing and implementing hardware and firmware for a prototype 3D graphics engine for color ink jet printers. Designed and implemented portions of firmware for 4510 color hard copy graphics engine, and 4692 color ink jet printer.

Research Assistant - MIT Media Lab: Working in Music/Cognition Group, architected and built prototypes of Motorola 56001-based smart NuBus audio card for Macintosh. Wrote drivers and resident software for this card, as well as a MIDI driver and real-time scheduling utilities.

Research Assistant - Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Paris, France): Designed and implemented MIDI-Lisp, a real-time extension of Lisp for musical programming. Architected and implemented PREFORM, an object-oriented extension to Lisp that included portable GUI toolkit with graphical interface builder, integrated with real-time preemptive scheduling and MIDI input/output.

Education

Master's-Level course work, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.
BS Computer Science with Honors, Oregon State University, 1983.

Additional Projects

Designed and implemented Ell, a variant of the Scheme functional language, implemented in Go. 2015.

Designed and implemented a Scheme compiler and runtime system in ANSI C. Ported to Win32, Macintosh, NeXTStep, SunOS 4.1 and Linux. Also implemented native code generator for i486 and m68k. 1993.

Designed and implemented a small multitasking kernel for a custom-built personal computer. Designed and built floppy disk, bitmapped display, and MIDI controller hardware for this computer. 1985.

Architected and built a 256 oscillator stereo additive synthesis music synthesizer based on m6809 processor and discrete TTL. The firmware included an interpreter for a personally developed music language. 1983.

Publications

"Musical Programming in Scheme", Proceedings of the 1992 International Computer Music Conference, San Jose, California.

"An overview of the Sound and Music Kits for the NeXT computer", The Well Tempered Object, Stephan Travis pope, ed. MIT Press, 1991.

"Voice/Data Integration in Electronic Messaging Systems. Unix World, 1990.

"Scheduling as Applied to musical Processing". MIT Media Laboratory Report, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.

"A Real-Time Acoustic Processing Card for the Mac II". Proceedings of the 1988 International Computer Music Conference, Cologne, Germany.

"MIDI_Lisp: A Lisp-Based Music Programming Environment for the Macintosh", Proceedings of the AES 5th International Conference, Los Angelos, California, 1987.

Adding a Graphical User Interface to FORMES". Proceedings of the 1986 International Computer Music Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.