Résumé

Lew Ayotte

—— A darn good software engineer manager, developer, and systems administrator.

With over two decades of experience in the Information Technology industry, I have the unique skills necessary to successfully lead engineering teams. I am dedicated to the success of my direct reports and building products that make people’s lives awesome, while maintaining a reputation built on quality and service.

Primary Skills

  • Managing Engineering Teams
  • Acquisition Research
  • Building Teams
  • Collaboration
  • Product Development
  • Solution Evaluation
  • Mentoring and Coaching
  • Strategizing
  • Ideating

Fun Facts

U6-U10 Soccer Coach for Bleckley County Rec Department

Can solve a Rubik’s Cube

Contributing author to Finding Church

Executive Producer of the No Agenda Show

Co-Executive Producer of the Daily Tech News Show

Author of The Concise Guide to Securing WordPress and Repairing Hacks

Liquid Web / iThemes

May 1, 2013 – Present
Remote

Manager of Development

February 2018 – Present

  • Lead and grew engineering teams with diverse backgrounds and skills
  • Collaborated with engineering, marketing, and support teams alongside other stakeholders to create the visions for the iThemes products.
  • Worked with project managers and designers to develop system of user interviews and feedback in order to build better products and features
  • Partnered with engineering and product managers across the Liquid Web organization to build new initiatives and strategies to help each other and our customers.
  • Built relationships with human resources and recruiters to interview and hire impressive talent that fit with our culture
  • Owned and preached ownership to direct-reports to impress upon everyone the importance of building products that “make people’s lives awesome” (the iThemes moto)
  • Created mentoring programs for junior/senior engineers
  • Developed 1-on-1 program for direct reports
  • Researched and investigated possible acquisitions to embolden the iThemes portfolio and help grow our brand
  • Build custom internal applications for internal use cases, mostly using PHP, JavaScript/React, and MySQL.

Senior PHP Developer (WordPress Plugin and SAAS)

May 2013 – February 2018

  • Lead Developer of iThemes Sync – A SAAS Platform and WordPress Plugin. Sync is an easy way to manage updates for all your WordPress sites from one place.
    • Developed internal APIs
    • Integrated with several third-party APIs, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, and Uptime Robot)
    • Maintained aging/outdated codebase and developed a plan to migrate to Laravel to relieve technical debt, which I was able to oversee once I moved into the Management position.
    • Integrated with several iThemes products (iThemes Security and Backup Buddy)
    • Integrated with several Liquid Web products (CloudSites and Managed WordPress Hosting)
  • Lead Developer of iThemes Exchange e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
    • Integrated with third-party payment processing APIs, such as PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net
    • Developed add-ons for and integrated with Tax services for VAT, Canadian, and U.S. Tax compliance
    • Created over 13 add-ons to ensure customers had every thing they needed for their e-commerce websites

Interests

Woodworking

Farming

Puzzles

Video Games

Economics

Philosophy

Fictions

Learning

Electronics

Crypto

Freelance WordPress Developer and LAMP/LEMP Engineer

February 2008 – Present
Remote

Zeen101 (partner)

February 2008 – Present

  • Developer of MultiPass – A SAAS Application built for Leaky Paywall users to allow their customers to access content across multiple newspaper/magazine partner sites.
  • Developer of livemarket.pub – A hands-off, recurring revenue, live-ad platform for local and niche publishers. SAAS Application built with Laravel with a WordPress plugin interface.
  • Developer of UniPress – A mobile app API plugin for WordPress.
  • Developer of Leaky Paywall – A paywall plugin for WordPress.
  • Developer of IssueM – An issue management plugin for WordPress.
  • Administrator of AnvilCloud – A premium web hosting solution offered to Newspaper and Magazine Publishers for over 30 publishers nationwide. Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) implementing LEMP stacks using EC2 Instances, CloudFront CDN, and S3 for speed and reliability.
  • Built custom investment tracking app for New Energy Capital to track vendor profiles, investments, contacts, as well as run complicated and customizable reports.

SysPress (owner)

February 2008 – Present

Other Relevant Experience

University of Georgia

IT Senior Manager & Principal Linux Administrator

August 4, 2008 to April 26, 2013
Athens, GA

  • Chaired Website Redesign Committee, supporting 250 Faculty, 500 Staff, and over 4500 Students.
  • Consulted on the development, security, and implementation of a College of Education Student Information System (required to meet FERPA and HIPAA regulations).
  • Built strategic intra-university partnerships.
  • Collaborated on 5-Year Strategic Plan for the Office of Information Technology in concert with the Dean’s Office
  • Managed team of three web developers, four helpdesk technicians, and one junior systems administrator
  • Acting Internet Security and UGA Network liaison for the College of Education
  • Developed and taught an 8-hour WordPress training course for the staff of the University of Georgia — broke up into four 2-hour sessions
  • Responsible for managing, securing, and maintaining eight Red Hat Enterprise Level servers and two Windows servers on VMWare, using tools like Cacti, OSSEC, Splunk, and Fortigate and Astaro Firewalls

Alterra Networks

Network Consultant

April 7, 2008 to August 4, 2008
Dublin, GA

  • Installed, setup, configured and managed new Windows servers and services for Alterra Network’s clients.
  • Required to learn new customer’s systems and setups quickly and on the spot to help troubleshoot and resolve any issues in a timely manner.
  • Provided consulting expertise for proactive network and system development and deployment.
  • Required to work on a team as well as independently.

IBM (CTG Contractor)

BIOS Test Engineer

April 23, 2007 to February 1, 2008
Raleigh, NC

  • Tested newly developed BIOS code drops for defects on IBM blades, running all enterprise level operating systems, Windows Server, Red Hat, OpenSUSE, etc.
  • Reported, researched, and verified defects to BIOS testing team and BIOS developers.
  • Developed step-by-step manual for BIOS testing IBM System Z mainframe.
  • Received “Above and Beyond” award for extraordinary dedicated and contribution in October 2007.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Windows Server and Exchange Administrator

February 07, 2005 to May 11, 2007
Wake Forest, NC

  • Maintained and monitored Windows server (NT, 2000, and 2003) running services like, MS Exchange, Active Directory, CIFS, Cold Fusion, and IIS.
  • Researched and implemented new services for Faculty, Staff and Students of the school.
  • Assisted in the development of in-house applications using various languages, such as, PERL, ASP, ColdFusion, VB.NET.
  • Wrote detailed instructions and tutorials for end user applications.
  • Responsible for responding to intradepartmental work-orders and tickets.

Great Works Internet

Systems Operations Administrator

December 07, 2000 to November 12, 2004
Biddeford, ME

  • Managed UNIX (FreeBSD/BSDi) servers running services like Cistron Radius and FreeRadius, OpenLDAP, Sendmail, BIND, DHCP, Apache, PHP, MySQL, IPF, VPOPMail, and Qmail.
  • Required to know and develop shell scripts in PERL and BASH used by technical support staff.
  • Required to research and respond to interdepartmental escalations in a timely and professional manner.
  • Wrote, performed, and documented details system upgrades (hardware and software).
  • Responsible for 24/7 on-call rotation.

Education

Bachelors of Arts in Biblical Studies

Graduated: December, 2007
GPA: 3.60/4.00
The College at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, NC

Bachelors of Science in Computer Science

Transferred 96 credit hours to Southeastern
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME

High School Diploma

Graduated: May, 1998
Thornton Academy
Saco, ME