Rajiv Pant

Responsibilities

• Reported directly to President of CN Digital, COO of CN Digital and to corporate CIO & CTO through organizational changes over the years.
• Responsible for budget in the tens of millions of dollars annually.
• Supervised multiple departments: Software Engineering, Technology Operations, Technical Analysis & Quality Assurance. Led team of 80+ staff (senior directors, managers & engineers). Supervised staff in New York City; San Francisco & Wilmington, Delaware; Managed offshore teams in India, Singapore & Russia.
• Responsible for development, technical operations & support of 65+ Web sites (25+ major brand sites & 40+ marketing/special-purpose sites) and 10+ major mobile phone and tablet apps. 1.7+ billion monthly page views & 35+ million monthly unique visitors on the major brand sites.
• Led technology due-diligence for investments & acquisitions and integration & ongoing operations post acquisitions/mergers.

Projects

• Led several successful Web site application launches and award winning Web site relaunches/redesigns on sites including Wired.com, GQ.com, Vogue.com, NewYorker.com, Style.com, Epicurious.com, VanityFair.com, Glamour.com, Brides.com and all other Conde Nast sites.
• Rajiv's teams developed & collaborated on several successful, award-winning iPhone, iPad & Android mobile apps
  • Developed: Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List; GQ, Vanity Fair & Glamour on iPad & iPhone; Wired Product Reviews; Style; Concierge Postcard
  • Collaborated: Gourmet Live; Custom functionality on top of magazine apps on Adobe digital magazine platform: Golf Digest Hot List app, CN Traveler Cruise Finder, CN Traveler Hot List; Vogue apps; New Yorker's Goings On About Town app
• Led successful migration of Web sites from one hosting provider to another, delivering over 50% cost savings of multiple millions of dollars per year. The project included:
  • Move from physical server instances to a more economic and efficient virtualized, private cloud based solution
  • Move of hundreds of servers from Sun hardware and Solaris to commodity Intel-based hardware running Linux
  • Move from an expensive, proprietary Java application server to an economical, open source one
  • Moves from several expensive software packages to economical and open source replacements
• Introduced company to Cloud Computing and led successful implementation of Web applications on Amazon EC2.
• Led teams and solved stability and performance issues on Web sites and content management system.
• Instituted 24x7 Internal Customer Service & Help Desk for all our Web production staff.
• Renegotiated several vendor contracts, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual savings: e.g. Content Delivery Network (over 50%), Community Functionality (over 50%).
• Led teams to switch from harder to maintain, slower remote development platform to a Mac based local development environment. This resulted in improved productivity and morale, including the gain of additional days worth of work per month for each engineer.
• Ensured business continuity through two difficult downsizings during the economic downturn. Reorganized staff, projects, processes and tools so to minimize impact of budget cuts.
• Co-authored process for project management and communication system for all departments and executive team.
• Encouraged teams to quickly learn emerging technologies (iPhone and Facebook app development) and develop award winning applications that received praise in press and were featured on Apple's Web sites and Apple Store billboards (Epicurious iPhone app, Style.com iPhone app, Wired iPhone app. Social Networking Team produced more than 20 applications in less than one year and presented them at conferences receiving praise for the quality rapid development.)
• Introduced a balanced diversity of technologies and rapid development tools (such as PHP and Grails) to complement and enterprise Java and Oracle.
• Successfully integrated teams that previously reported into different organizations into one coherent team. Did this twice in two separate mergers of external technology departments into Rajiv's team.
  • United disparate cultures and product lines resulting from mergers and improved management visibility into the software development process by growing agile project management methodologies throughout the organization.
  • Integrated back-end and front-end development teams into one coherent organization.
  • Streamlined QA teams and processes, including the introduction of automated testing to complement manual testing
  • Created efficiencies by eliminating boundaries of different departments
  • Created an environment of learning and sharing, Expanded the skills of individual engineers
  • Adapted 'generalist' and 'specialist' models to meet different types of business needs.
  • Retained staff in difficult times. A number of employees who had left the company returned to work in Rajiv's team.

Achievements & Awards

• Conde Nast's Web sites won several industry awards each year for relaunches & redesigns where the technology work was done by Rajiv's teams.
• The Epicurious iPhone & iPad app developed by Rajiv's team received many awards and praise in the press. It was featured in Steve Job's keynote address at the iPhone 4 launch and has been regularly featured in Apple's TV, print & digital advertising.
• Members of Rajiv's staff, hired & coached by him won awards including 2009 Innovator of The Year at Conde Nast.

Responsibilities

• Supervised multiple departments: Project Management, Software Engineering, Technology Operations and Customer Service. Led team of about 45 engineers and managers.
• Member of Cox CIO's Leadership Exchange comprised of technology leaders from various Cox companies that meets regularly to share management and technology best practices.
• Responsible for technology budget including multi-million dollar shared web hosting infrastructure and software for all of Cox's newspapers.
• Reported directly to head of digital company and coordinated with Cox corporate CIO.

Projects

• Led team and solved stability and performance issues on web sites and content management system. Improved the reliability and performance of web sites with infrastructure upgrades and implementation of advanced content delivery network.
• Instituted Project Management organization: Hired staff and led implementation of processes. Launched an internal projects information web site. This web site provides information on all projects including status, estimated completion dates, issues, reports and contact information. It also has an online form for our newspapers to submit project requests.
• Instituted 24x7 Internal Customer Service & Help Desk for all our newspapers' web production staff. It was called the best thing ever done for them by a metro newspaper's Internet General Manager.
• Reorganized software engineering organization into an Enterprise Projects team and a Special Projects / Fast Track team. Implemented Agile Development methodologies. These greatly improved the quality and time-to-market of web applications for our newspapers.
• Developed Single-Sign-On solution for our web sites to integrate separate sign on systems between our sites and external vendor hosted applications for our sites. (Rollout in progress.)
• Implemented shared Local Programming Environment web hosting infrastructure for our newspaper brands to have more control of their web sites and to encourage innovation.
• Launched several successful web site applications for our newspapers, including mobile/PDA access, RSS, Blogs and user community submitted content.

Achievements & Awards

• Newspaper Association of America's 20 Under 40 recognition, December 2006 (link)
• Two teams under Rajiv's direction received two separate Newspaper Association of America 2004 Best Practice Awards in New Media for the development and implementation of the following (link)
  • Print+Web suite of multi-platform content management and publishing products
  • A system for upgrading web application software on high traffic web sites without requiring downtime

Responsibilities

• Oversaw the functioning of the about 35 engineers, managers and directors in San Jose, CA and Philadelphia, PA. (up to 20 contractors on year-long projects) Managed multi-million dollar budget of the Engineering department. Mentored and advised 3 senior directors. Coached and provided technical and problem solving expertise to engineers. Acted as technical problem solver of last resort.
• Worked closely with managers of Product, Editorial, Sales, Marketing, and Research departments and employees of 31 regional newspaper offices.
• Reported directly to Senior Vice President of Product & Technology.

Projects

• Managed overall technology in the development and implementation of Knight Ridder Digital's next generation unified content management and publishing system based on the Cofax (link) product integrated with the BEA Weblogic Platform and the Oracle Database. This was a year-long project (total budget over $20 million) with over 100 staff in multiple locations. Customer requirements for this product were extremely diverse and varied across markets. This new product transitioned the company to a new operational paradigm and currently 31 Knight Ridder web sites are in production and being served by this system. The implementation of this new technology has increased efficiency by over 40% and though there isn't a comparable alternative, it is expected to save over 50% in licensing and operating costs.
• Served as Knight Ridder Digital's technology representative to assist parent company select the future print publishing system for all 31 Knight Ridder Newspapers. This project involved understanding requirements of all of KR's newspapers, negotiations with multiple vendors, interactions with CEOs, senior managers, employees and checking references of vendors. Aligned business requirements and product with the company's vision, business and products to recommend the suitable vendor for us. The vendor (CCI Europe) was chosen by the management of Knight Ridder.
• Directed the migration of 31 Knight Ridder web sites to a single hosting provider. This resulted in consolidation of all web hosting, related management and expenses into one operation and reduced expenses by 30%.

Achievements & Awards

• An Engineering team under Rajiv's direction received the Newspaper Association of America 2001 Best Practice Award in New Media (link) for the development and implementation of Xmultra (link), a product used for integrating data in the legacy newspaper publishing systems with web publishing systems.

Responsibilities

• Accepted additional responsibilities for sites in the Northeast US region.

Projects

• Led the implementation of the Cofax content management and publishing system for 20 newspapers across the country. Successful implementation led to 30% savings in operational costs and created efficiencies that freed up about 40 employees to be redeployed. This product was featured as the top story (link) on Sun's Java home page in February 2001 as an example of a large enterprise benefiting from the use of Java technology.
• Rajiv's team migrated the technology infrastructure to the new office location. This was successfully completed without any interruption of service.
• Under Rajiv's supervision, the technology operations team successfully migrated about 100 user email and workgroup accounts from local operations in Philadelphia, Kentucky and Ohio to the centralized operation in Miami. This consolidation resulted in better service and 40% cost savings.

Responsibilities

• Continued the previous role of technology department manager and accepted additional responsibilities to include strategy and business.

Projects

• Envisioned a unified news media content management and publishing system. Led the development of this system called Cofax (link). Today, Cofax is among the most popular open source news media content management products used by newspapers and media companies in the US, Europe and Asia. It has been favorably reviewed in over a dozen magazine articles. Rajiv was also directly involved in selling the Cofax concept to the different Knight Ridder newspaper sites. Rajiv was ultimately successful in convincing newspapers' online staff, Knight Ridder Digital senior management and Digital employees in multiple cities of the benefits of Cofax. Delivering results with each new implementation was a challenging and fulfilling task.
• Acted as the primary technology consultant to Knight Ridder Video, a profitable subsidiary of Philadelphia Newspapers. Assisted KR Video negotiate a business relationship with Channel 6 ABC in Philadelphia. Authored a proposal with three options for affiliation between the two companies. Provided primary technology and product development services for the creation of the 6abc.philly.com web joint venture.

Achievements

• Advocated and established software engineering methodologies helpful for rapid development including a subset of agile/extreme programming practices including pair-programming, refactoring and iteration planning that were used in several successful projects.
• Ensured Year 2000 compliance at the company. The systems worked without problem on the date and during the subsequent months. Due to mainframes and legacy systems involved, this took several months of diligent work beforehand.

Responsibilities

• Managed a team of 5 employees plus up to 5 independent contractors. Helped develop and implement strategy, business, product and operational planning for the division and online products of Philadelphia Newspapers. Played a key role in shaping the vision of the products and services and led several implementations.

Projects

• Project lead for the development and implementation of a new product for managing print ads for Philly Tech magazine. The magazine was in need of such a system to generate revenue and did not have the funding or the time to purchase, implement and maintain an expensive system. This system was developed and implemented 50% under budget and 50% faster than they had targeted for. It continued to meet all their needs during the magazine's 3-year lifetime. It required minimal operational and maintenance costs. Also implemented the technology platform for Philly-Tech's web site.
• Served as technology consultant to General Manager and VP of Business Development of Philadelphia Newspapers for evaluation of company acquisitions specializing in online recruitment products. Participated in negotiations with Senior Management of prospective companies and conducted all technology related interviews with their employees to evaluate their products, services, technologies and long-term prospects.

Achievements

• Organized the technology department into development and operations teams. This resulted in improved focus, and allowed employees to better pursue their career growth.

Projects

• Ideated and led the development of a web portal and search engine product called Finder that powered the Philly Finder (link) service for 5 years. This unique search engine and portal helped Philly.com become a comprehensive destination for Philadelphia related information. It resulted in improved search results and an increase in users, page views and advertising revenue.
• Led the development of an online Yellow Pages product. It was in production as a steady source of revenue for the online department for 4 years. This success resulted in the hiring of additional sales people to sell this product.
• Led development of the first web gateway to the legacy Atex publishing system for newspapers. This enabled reporters and editors to securely file stories from any web browser and was a paradigm shift in working remotely. This was a major advance over the old dial up systems that were unreliable, slow and expensive to maintain. This enabled journalists the freedom to work without their own laptops that required special software and configuration to dial up and interface with the legacy systems. This saved over 80% in costs.

Projects

• Designed and developed a job listings system for Philadelphia Newspapers' classified listings online. It powered Planet Jobs, the most popular job search web site in the Philadelphia area for over 3 years. Until Knight Ridder's co-acquisition of CareerBuilder, this product primarily sustained and strengthened the two newspapers' recruitment listings. Among other innovations, Planet Jobs was the first online job site that had a shopping cart feature where job seekers could save their selected job postings.
• Designed and led development of one of the first newspaper web publishing systems. This system called Pin, was in production for 4 years. This was arguably the first automated online newspaper publishing system in the world. It allowed Philadelphia Newspapers to compete favorably against other newspaper companies with much larger staffs. The automation of this system allowed editors and producers to focus on online journalism and build several award winning online products on it, including the acclaimed Black Hawk Down web site.
• Developed a personalized edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News Newspapers called "The Clipper" which provided personalized news via the web and e-mail. This resulted in improved customer loyalty and helped build a database of over a hundred thousand registered users.
• Ideated and developed an online ad management system for web sites called AdMaster. This was an industry-first and Philly.com received industry wide interest from several competing companies for the product. This product enabled business people to sell and manage ads on the web sites without depending on technology or editorial people. This made advertising highly effective on the Philadelphia Newspapers web sites and was instrumental in helping the Sales Team win the 1997 Editor and Publisher EPPY award for Best use of Advertising on a Newspaper Web Site (link).
• Developed the first Internet e-mail gateway for the Philadelphia Newspapers legacy Atex publishing system. This enabled journalists to file and retrieve stories via e-mail. People in the newsrooms found this a revolutionary way to work. This created enormous cost and time savings for journalists in multiple locations around the world.
• Led development of the system for content management, publishing and co-branding for The Sports Network (link), a partner company of Knight Ridder. After being in production for 5 years, it continues to power the Sports Network Web site as well as the co-branded sports sites for dozens of their customers including the New York Times, Fox Sports, Comcast, Tribune Media, Cox Interactive, Knight Ridder, Media General and many others. The use of this product has been a very significant portion of the Sports Network's revenue and business model. It enabled them to transition from a sports wire service to an Internet based media and content distribution company.
• Developed the Philly.com web development and hosting division for other organizations' web sites. This provided a steady stream of revenue to our online department for 5 years. Besides being a profitable business venture, it enabled Philadelphia Newspapers to build strong relationships with several organizations in the Philadelphia area like the Chamber of Commerce and Genuardis Family Markets and helped build stronger ties with major newspaper advertisers. This led to increase in revenues by 10%.
• Served as the lead developer of a product for the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia that enabled over a million visitors to the museum to instantly publish their personal web pages along with their digital photo on the museum's web site. In recognition of this work, Rajiv's name was imprinted on the wall inside the museum along with individuals and organizations that donated money or work to the museum's CyberZone section.