Rasmus Lerdorf

contact: rasmusATlerdorfDOTcom     (no recruiters please)
Objective
My goal is to work on things that matter. Things that touch peoples' lives for the better.
Notable
  • Original author of the PHP scripting language
  • Etsy Advisor
  • Room77 Advisor
  • WePay Advisor
  • MySQL Advisor (until their sale to Oracle)
  • ActiveState Advisory board member (disbanded after sale to Sophos)
  • GreatBridge Advisory board member (Company went under)
  • Apache Software Foundation board of directors in 2000
  • Apache HTTP Server Core Development Team member
  • O'Reilly author (Programming PHP, PHP Pocket Reference, parts of WebMaster in a Nutshell)
  • Frequent speaker on PHP, and Open Source at conferences, universities and user groups around the world
  • Named to MIT/TechnologyReview's 2003 list of Top 100 Young Innovators
  • I don't have a cell phone
Experience
Distinguished Engineer   Mar. 2012 - Present     Etsy    Brooklyn, NY
  • Architecture, i18n, payments, fraud, security
 
Senior Developer   Aug. 2010 - Apr. 2011     WePay    Palo Alto, CA
  • Infrastructure engineering and architecture
  • nginx, php-fpm, security, fraud prevention, REST API
 
Distinguished Engineer   Sept. 2002 - Nov. 2009     Yahoo! Inc.    Sunnyvale, CA
  • Infrastructure engineering and architecture
  • PHP, Apache, Security, Web Services, Ajax, Web 2.0, and I18n
  • Open Source compliance work
  • Training and evangelism work at International Yahoo! offices
  • Heavy yearly conference schedule (20+)
 
Time Off   June 2001 - Sept. 2002     Dot.com Bomb/baby Vacation    San Francisco, CA
  • Time off to play with the new baby
  • finish writing the O'Reilly Programming PHP book and the new Pocket Ref.
  • and attend countless conferences around the world
 
Research   Jan 2000 - May 2001     Linuxcare Inc.    San Francisco, CA
  • Large-scale app architecture and implementation
  • Technical due-diligence work during acquisitions
  • Speaker at Open Source Linux Expo (Sydney, Australia), Bang!inux 2000,2001 (Bangalore, India), ThunderLizard Web Design 2000 (Atlanta), O'Reilly 2000 (Monterey), Borland Conference (San Diego), Linuxworld (San Jose, New York), Linux Revolution 2000 (Seoul, Korea), OSDEM (Brussels), Usenix/European (Stockholm).
 
Senior Software Engineer   1999 - 2000     IBM Corporation    RTP, NC
  • Apache 2.0 Architecture involvement
  • DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) work
  • IBM DB2 work
  • Various Internal IBM projects
  • Speaker at ApacheCon (San Francisco), IETF(WWW8 in Toronto), O'Reilly99 (Monterey), and TheBazaar (New York).
 
IT Consultant   1996 - 1998     Bell Global Solutions / Bell Emergis    Toronto, Canada
  • Participated in the initial screening of opportunities relevant to Internet business solutions.
  • Defined the conceptual and technical elements of Internet related business products and services.
  • Provided technical architecture and direction.
  • Built large-scale Virtual Email service.
  • Built Advanced Server Farm service.
Technologies: Netscape Mail Server, Collabra, Commerce Server, Enterprise Server, Directory Server, ,LDAP SDK, FrontPage97 Server Extensions, Irix, HTTPD, CGI, NSAPI, ISDN, Cisco switches and routers, NetApp Filers.

 
IT Consultant   1995 - 1996     University of Toronto    Toronto, Canada
  • Responsible for designing the university's new dial-up service (UTORDial)
  • Wrote terminal server control software (Cisco TACACS+)
  • Wrote SQL/HTML accounting system
  • A lot of early PHP work was done for this project
Technologies: Cisco TACACS+ protocol, Solaris 2.5, C, Perl5, HTTPD, CGI, HTML, Cisco ASM, AS5100 terminal servers, Expect, sh, CMU SNMP, RDBMS, Oracle7, Oracle7 Forms, mSQL, TCP/IP Internals, PPP Internals, Corba, ORB, ILU.

 
IT Consultant   1994 - 1999     Lerdorf Consultants Inc.    Toronto, Canada
  • Developed PHP/FI package which was distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
  • Co-authored full PHP/FI rewrite called PHP3. See http://www.php.net/. This is quickly becoming one of the web's most popular scripting languages.
  • Member of Apache Development Group (Apache is the most popular Web server in the world)
  • Speaker on PHP and Apache at a number of conferences around the world.
  • Wrote the mod_info module for the Apache web server.
  • Wrote a CGI redirection module for the Netscape family of web servers using NSAPI.
  • Wrote CGI redirection patch for the NCSA web server
  • Assisted in the design and development of countless home pages and commercial web sites.
Technologies: HTTPD, CGI, FastCGI, JavaScript, Java, HTML, C, Perl, YACC (Bison), lex (flex), Netscape Server API (NSAPI), Apache API, ISAPI, NCSA HTTPD internals, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF/1, Windows NT, Windows 95, ODBC 2.0, ODBC 3.0, Watcom SQL, RDBMS, Empress, mSQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Solid, Oracle, Sybase, Adabas-D, IMAP4, POP3, LDAP, ACAP, XML.

 
IT Consultant   1994 - 1995     Online Construction    Toronto, Canada
  • Developed graphical user interface for a Toronto Internet Service Provider
  • Responsible for all technical issues involved in getting an ISP on-line
Technologies: C, Tcl, Perl, Solaris 2.4, Linux, Xylogics terminal servers.

 
Product Manager   1993 - 1994     Nutec Informática    Mountain View, California
  • Managed small UNIX/DOS software development team
  • Developed a unique client/server GUI environment called Nutec Desktop
  • Managed a tiered distribution network
  • Attended all major UNIX/DOS/Networking tradeshows and was an invited speaker at SCO Forum in 1993
  • Coordinated distributor training sessions
  • Technical account manager for large accounts throughout USA and Canada
 
UNIX Programmer   1991 - 1993     Nutec Informática    Porto Alegre, Brazil
  • Designed and developed an object-oriented user interface builder
  • Served as North American liaison for this South American company
Technologies: All Intel-based Unices, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF/1, MS-Dos, C, Watcom C, Borland C, Microsoft C, AlphaWindow Standard, No-Loss Data Compression algorithms - LZ77 and LZ78 variants, XVT, Motif, GUI design.

 
Communications Engineer   1991     NovAtel Communications    Calgary, Canada
  • Part of "Think Tank" group called the Advanced Product Concept Division
  • Designed a cellular data communications system
  • 2 Canadian patents were registered in my name under the trademark Dataseeker/CDO (Cellular Data Overlay)
Technologies: DSP - TMS320 family, C51, 68HC11 hardware design, TCP/IP, SNA (IBM certified SNA technician), C, SCO Unix, Xenix.

 
Chief Support Engineer   1990     Digital Media Networks    Toronto, Canada
  • Maintained and performed troubleshooting on live news satellite transmission system
  • Designed and implemented a forward error correction protocol to ensure data transmission integrity
Technologies: SunOS 4.1.3, No-Loss Data Compression algorithms.

Education
1988-1993     University of Waterloo    Waterloo, Canada
  • Honours B.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering - CO-OP Program
  • Received a University of Waterloo Entrance Scholarship
  • Workterms with BNR, NT, DMN, NovAtel and Nutec.
Publications
Interests
Traveling, Internet, languages, soccer, and developing Open Source software.