My background is in software engineering; I spent several years as a professional programmer, first at Microsoft up in Redmond, and then at a succession of smaller companies. (See my full resume.)
Last year I decided to move into a more flexible career path, and I started working with a nonprofit doing website updates. I quickly discovered that their previous "web developers" had opened serious security holes on their web server, probably due to inexperience rather than malice.
This seems to be a systemic problem among nonprofits: they need people with a fairly high level of technical skill, but it's hard to hire those people if you don't have that skill yourself. As a result, nonprofits frequently end up with folks who are great HTML coders, but are in over their heads when it comes to programming and security.
Because of my software engineering background and my intimate knowledge of UNIX and Windows, I can come in to a website updating job with a much better understanding of what's going on "under the hood" than most web developers do. This gives the organizations I work with a tremendous advantage.
Typically, an organization hires me for some combination of these reasons:
- To update and maintain an existing site.
- To develop new interactive features for a website.
- To conduct a security audit and put in place a security policy.
- To triage an existing website or network once something has gone wrong.
Every org wants to keep their website up to date and prevent security glitches in their network, but often they don't have the expertise on staff to do so. I help them make sure their data is safe, their network is safe, their website is current, and, if appropriate, help them hire someone full-time to continue the work.
Contact me to discuss a possible job.
