Benjamin M. Watson
ben [at] benwatson [dot] org
Work Experience and History
Principal Engineer at Microsoft
Bing, 2008 – Present
- Recognized expert in .NET performance in Bing, Microsoft, and the industry.
- Large architectural design and modifications to complex distributed systems.
- Designed and coded critical query-serving components for Bing. Extremely high-availability, reliability and performance requirements. Utilized advanced .NET programming techniques, pushing the envelope of the CLR’s capabilities.
- Mentored individuals and led teams to monitor and improve performance in the Bing platform.
Led development of large application at foremost satellite imaging company
Application Engineer, GeoEye, SeaStar Fisheries Information Service 2005 – 2008
- Developed large product (150,000 LOC) used by thousands in fishing industry (C++)
- Developed services for real-time data delivery, handling thousands of messages per day (C#, XML, HTTP, FTP); interfaces with 3rd party systems across Internet.
- Developed internal tools for automating processes, managing assets, and simplifying
analysis of oceanographic data - Improved reliability of software with unit testing; eliminated unintended down-time
- Additional technologies used: MFC, Simple MAPI, Win32 API, IIS, SQL Server 2000,
Exchange Server 2003, NUnit, Nant, ASP.Net - Led team in all software development activities
Published Books
Writing High-Performance .NET Code, July 2014.
Education
MS Computer Science
May 2006
George Washington University, Washington, DC
- Area of focus: Software engineering, user interfaces
- GPA: 4.0
Other Interests, Skills, Activities, and Experience
- Piano
- music composition
- reading
- New York Times crossword