Discover how Doug has tackled complex engineering challenges, leading projects to successful outcomes through innovative solutions and strategic leadership.
Multi-Platform In App Purchasing
Major Streaming Service
Challenge: A major streaming service was preparing to launch a direct-to-consumer platform but needed systems to enable purchasing and reporting for in-app purchases across multiple platforms. These systems had to be scalable and flexible for future integrations.
Action: In the role of an engineering manager, Doug gathered requirements from all necessary platforms and coordinated with teams like finance and business intelligence to plan the data flow. He led the technical architecture design and implementation for both client- and server-side solutions to ensure compatibility and future scalability.
Result: The direct-to-consumer platform launched successfully, with the in-app purchase system working as designed. This launch established the company as a key player in the streaming industry and marked a significant step in its growth.
Golf Mapping, Distance & Scoring Solution
Startup
Challenge: A startup sought to create a fully functional golf app for the Apple Watch that would allow golfers to view distances and course maps directly on their watch. While several golf apps existed, those with Apple Watch support functioned mainly as remote controls for phone apps, lacking full functionality on the watch itself. The challenge was twofold: the Apple Watch did not support maps natively, requiring a custom mapping solution, and obtaining golf course data was difficult due to high costs and restrictive licensing of commercially available data.
Action: Doug identified OpenStreetMap as a potential solution for sourcing golf course data. He created a custom library that rendered maps from OpenStreetMap data and built watch logic for displaying maps, measuring distances, and keeping score. He helped the company experiment with both fixed-price and subscription models for monetization and built the systems to support each. After the app gained traction, he helped extend it to a phone version, offering the same ease of use as the watch version. To account for limited staffing, Doug created a system for using contractors to handle the mapping of courses not included in OpenStreetMap and built tools to track progress and update customers using automated administrative processes.
Result: The app is now available for both Apple Watch and iPhone using a subscription model. It continues to grow as new features are added based on user feedback.
Credit Card Billing & Payment Platform
Major Streaming Service
Challenge: A major streaming service aimed to increase per-subscriber revenue by offering direct subscriptions via credit card. Additionally, they needed to introduce a full financial reporting system, as the responsibility for direct-to-consumer billing would be fully on the company.
Action: In the role of an engineering manager, Doug helped to create a cross-functional vendor evaluation group and establish evaluation criteria. He served as the primary technical advisor, liaising between vendors, technical teams, and non-technical stakeholders. Doug led the working group through the evaluation process, achieving consensus, preparing a written recommendation, and presenting it to senior leadership. He then led his team, in partnership with the selected vendor, through solution design, system architecture, and implementation.
Result: The rollout was successful, and Direct Credit Card Billing became the most widely used payment method on the platform, allowing the company to retain up to 26.5% more revenue per transaction.
Enterprise Content Management System
US Government
Challenge: A US government department sought a way to improve the dissemination of information between embassies and other areas of the government. After evaluating various options, the department determined that embassy-level intranet websites would be the most effective solution. Doug, serving as a consultant, was tasked with evaluating off-the-shelf content management systems (CMS). At the time, available systems were cumbersome, difficult to use, and far too complex for the specific use case. After conducting a thorough evaluation, Doug and the team recommended building a custom in-house solution tailored to the department’s needs.
Action: Doug led a development team in creating a custom content management system designed for non-technical users. The system allowed users to easily create, organize, and share content. Despite its simplicity, the system included advanced features such as role-based permissions, full-text search, and content sharing across multiple intranet sites. Doug and his team involved actual users in testing throughout development, prepared extensive user documentation, and gathered direct feedback from users by traveling to embassies to observe how the system was being used in practice.
Result: The system was widely adopted across embassies and other areas of the government, effectively improving information dissemination. It allowed non-technical users to create and manage content easily, while also providing significant cost savings compared to licensing enterprise-level CMS solutions. The success of the system led other areas of the government to adopt it for their own internal use, further expanding its impact.
Custom E-Commerce Website & Backend
Mid-Sized Company
Challenge: Before SaaS e-commerce solutions became commonplace, Doug’s primary responsibility at a mid-sized advertising specialties company involved designing catalogs for direct mail marketing. At the time, online sales were still in their infancy. After discussing the potential for online marketing and sales with the company’s management, Doug offered to assist in bringing their business online.
Action: Doug’s first project was moving the company’s business-to-business catalog online. He built systems that read product data and images from print files and developed a process to automatically generate web pages from them. Following the success of this initiative, Doug expanded his efforts to build full e-commerce sites for the company’s consumer brands. This included integrating online payment systems, product personalization features, and backend systems for order fulfillment and tracking. Doug also assisted with online marketing efforts, including display ads and early pay-per-click advertising. Despite being early in his career, Doug took full ownership of the project, collaborating with leadership and leading a team that assisted with design, development, and testing.
Result: The websites became a major purchasing channel for the company. The online personalization features allowed customers to enter their own personalization details, reducing the company’s reliance on seasonal employees for manual data entry. This led to significant cost savings, as the company no longer needed to hire 20-30 additional seasonal workers, nor maintain the systems required for that work. The company’s success online contributed to its eventual acquisition by a much larger competitor, with future iterations of the websites continuing to serve customers today.
Global Payment & Tokenization Platform
Major Streaming Service
Challenge: As a major streaming service expanded globally, the company needed to support numerous new payment methods, each varying by country. These payment methods were essential, but integrating them could take weeks or even months. To meet aggressive market launch timelines, a faster approach was needed. Additionally, the company’s PCI credit card data was stored with a single payment service provider, limiting flexibility. The company needed more control over which providers to use for transactions, allowing real-time decisions based on availability (regional and technical) and the cost of each transaction.
Action: In the role of an engineering manager, Doug led an initiative to find a tokenization service that supported universal tokenization, reducing PCI risk while enabling control over which payment service provider (PSP) to send transactions through. Doug led his team of architects and engineers to identify potential vendors, define evaluation criteria, and establish a cross-functional stakeholder group. After meeting with vendors, a selection was made, and Doug led the team in designing a solution that allowed the company to route transactions dynamically. The solution was presented to senior leadership, securing approval, and was successfully implemented.
Result: The enhanced system allowed the company to onboard new payment methods much faster, meeting global market launch timelines. The solution also provided the company with greater flexibility, opening the door for real-time decision-making on the best PSP to route transactions through, optimizing both availability and cost.
Customer Support Vendor Integration
Major Streaming Service
Challenge: As part of a major streaming service’s expansion following its acquisition, the company needed to scale its customer service department to handle a significantly larger subscriber base. A new system was required to integrate a call center partner’s capabilities with internal systems, allowing agents to access account and usage information, and provide temporary access when needed. However, a dedicated team had yet to be assembled, and with a tight launch timeline, immediate action was necessary.
Action: In the role of a business analyst and architect, Doug conducted an on-site visit to the call center to understand their processes, systems, and technical capabilities. He discussed integration points and options with the team, and upon returning, expanded the initial discussions into a detailed roadmap. Doug also provided a technical integration plan to help the newly formed development team get started, and then transitioned to a supporting role as the project progressed.
Result: The integration plan enabled the new development team to quickly get up to speed, and they successfully implemented the system. The launch of the streaming platform included a fully integrated customer service system, capable of scaling to meet the demands of its growing subscriber base.
Global Engineering Team Building
Major Streaming Service
Challenge: As a major streaming service continued its rapid growth, the company needed to quickly expand both in terms of features and geographic reach. Mergers had resulted in a geographically dispersed workforce, leading to communication challenges and imbalanced resource utilization, with underutilized resources in some locations and overutilized resources in others. To support critical areas such as Direct Credit Card Billing, In-App Purchases, subscription management, and the marketing website, the company needed to expand and reorganize its engineering teams to ensure effective collaboration and resource utilization across time zones.
Action: In the role of engineering director, Doug reallocated existing resources to better align with their strengths and hired additional talent to fill gaps in the team. He also hired managers for each sub-team, promoting from within where possible and recruiting externally when needed. Doug designed processes to enable geographically diverse teams to collaborate efficiently and communicate asynchronously, addressing the challenges of cross-timezone coordination.
Result: The reorganized teams successfully supported both existing customer needs and new feature development for the rapidly growing product. Cross-timezone issues were addressed, ensuring a fair work-life balance for all team members while maintaining strong communication. Throughput increased with a near 24/5 global workforce, improving the teams’ overall productivity and resource utilization.