Curriculum Vitae: Jan Paul Posma

• Oxford-graduated computer scientist with a broad range of interests. Implementing impactful ideas. Current focus: public transport.

  I’ve written production code in 15 languages, taught programming and engineering for 8 years, made 3 legacy code bases maintainable again, wrote ~6000 lines of pure compiler code to make new UIs possible, signed up 1000s new users per month for unadvertised years-old independent products, and once used 25 wine glasses in a project for MTV.

Oxford-graduated computer scientist with a broad range of interests. Current focus: public transport. I’ve written production code in 15 languages, taught programming and engineering for 8 years, made 3 legacy code bases maintainable again, wrote ~6000 lines of pure compiler code to make new UIs possible, and once used 25 wine glasses in a project for MTV.

• Professional experience

  • 2016 – present

    Remix (software engineer)

    Public transport is a crucial part of a functioning society. It helps lifting people out of poverty, takes cars of the road, and so on. At Remix we build tools for designing public transportation, to help cities better serve their citizens.

    getremix.com
  • 2015 – 2016

    Brigade (software engineer)

    We tried to tackle the problem of declining citizen power and engagement in American democracy, by building tools for expressing your civic identity, learning about your friends and neighbours, and working toward common goals together.

    I worked on the web application, where I mainly focused on features for customer growth; several of my proposals and implementations significantly increased our rate of acquisition. I introduced engineering practices that keep the complexity of our application contained, and I created a system for managing, visualising, and testing analytics events and experiments. Sometimes my work results in open source projects, such as a polyfill for delayed scroll restoration.

    brigade.com, github.com/brigade/delayed-scroll-restoration-polyfill
  • 2013 – 2015

    Versal (software engineer)

    I worked on the core product: an authoring tool for interactive courses, built from the belief that we are vastly underutilising the computer’s potential in education. Based on lessons learned, I co-authored a new API for “gadgets” — building blocks of courses, such as videos, quizzes, simulations, games, and so on. We launched our development platform with this new API, and it was well received by gadget developers (much of the API has been released as open source). I also mentored several junior engineers, spoke at industry events, and advised on systems architecture and product design.

    versal.com, github.com/Versal
  • 2012 – 2014

    Factlink (software engineer)

    We built an open source tool for curbing misinformation on the web. I worked on getting traction and applying good engineering practices. We did not manage to get substantial traction, but applied the lessons learned to a spin-off company, HackerOne, which was funded by Benchmark Capital for $9 million in May 2014. In 2015 I adapted some of the code for the open source project Annotator.js.

    factlink.com, hackerone.com, github.com/Factlink/annotator-paragraph-icons
  • 2011

    Wikimedia Foundation (software engineer)

    I worked in the features team, developing new tools for Wikipedia and other sites running MediaWiki. I mainly worked on WikiLove, a feature that got major media coverage. I was also involved in the discussion about building a new parser, a major project which enables developers to build a visual editor in the future.

    wikimediafoundation.org, wikipedia.org, mediawiki.org, http://news.google.com/?q=wikilove, http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Future
  • 2010 – 2011

    University of Groningen (teaching assistant)

    As a teaching assistant for Computing Science, I taught practical sessions, wrote teaching materials, and reviewed and graded submitted work.

    rug.nl
  • 2009 – 2010

    WorldTicketShop (software engineer)

    I was one of the first hires to work on the new marketplace. Although working only part-time for most of the time, I built large parts of the critical infrastructure of the site, made sure the transition between the old and the new site went well, did some of the dynamic parts of the front-end and was in charge of the performance.

    worldticketshop.com
  • summer of 2009

    Cantouch (multitouch developer intern)

    I worked on a large multi-touch table that supported many touches at the same time, allowing for multi-user interactions. I built two promotional applications for Technische Unie, a Dutch wholesale business.

    youtu.be/3163Llr5qBs
  • 2008 – 2009

    Triati (software engineer)

    I first worked on seoAssistant, a web application to monitor performance of websites in search engines. Then I built sportCMS, a website system for small communities, such as sport clubs.

    triati.com
  • 2006 – 2007

    Aerotronic (software engineer)

    I worked on the Aerotronic webshop, which primarily sells remote-controlled helicopters. I improved the user experience and developed new modules.

    aerotronic.nl
  • Contact information for references can be supplied upon request.

• Education

  • 2011 – 2012

    MSc in Computer Science, University of Oxford

    I studied and lived at St Hugh’s College, where I was a committee member for the Middle Common Room. My final project was JavaScript dares, an interactive online programming course aimed at high school students, for which the thesis can be found online. It featured a carefully crafted set of puzzles based on the LOGO turtle and Karel the Robot, and a custom subset implementation of Javascript called js-- to make time-travel debugging and visualisation of execution possible.

    ox.ac.uk, mcr.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk, jsdares.com
  • 2008 – 2011

    BSc in Computing Science (cum laude), University of Groningen

    I completed the Computing Science bachelor with distinction, cum laude. It included a 6-month minor in Mathematics. I also did committee work for Cover and FMF, two student associations.

    For my bachelor thesis I researched new ways of editing wikis such as Wikipedia. In October 2010 I presented preliminary results at the MediaWiki Hack-A-Ton in Washington D.C. on invitation of the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2011 development continued in close collaboration with developers of GRNET, a Greek government-funded research institute. We presented this work at a gathering in Berlin in May 2011. The final thesis received a mark of 9.5 (out of 10), and can be found online.

    rug.nl, svcover.nl, fmf.nl, wikipedia.org, wikimediafoundation.org, grnet.gr, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:In-line_Editing_thesis.pdf
  • 2002 – 2008

    Willem Lodewijk Gymnasium, Groningen

    I followed the track Nature and Technology, which focuses on exact sciences. Besides the main courses and the courses from this track, I studied economics and ancient Greek. My graduation project was PimpMyBike, an electronic circuit placed in the wheel of a bike, which displays an image when driving. Finally, I maintained the school’s website.

    wlg.nl, janpaulposma.nl/pimpmybike

• Experience, prizes, and awards

  • 2015

    Vote16SF (With Jared Shay and the Vote16SF teenagers)

    With Jared Shay and the Vote16SF teenagers
    For the Generation Citizen Civic Tech Challenge 2015 a fellow programmer and I teamed up with a group that advocates for a lower voting age. In one day we put together a website that tells San Francisco voters why lowering the voting age is a good idea, and concrete steps they can take to help. Our team won the competition’s Civic Alignment Prize.

    civictechchallenge.org, vote16sf.org
  • 2015

    Visualising Program Execution

    Based on my work on jsdares and research into debugging tools, I developed prototypes for new ways of gathering and visualising execution traces of programs. I presented my findings at a few conferences: ForwardJS, OSCON, and Strange Loop. After that, I released the final prototype, which I actually used in our production codebase at Brigade.

    jsdares.com, janpaulposma.nl/visualising-program-execution, github.com/janpaul123/omniscient-debugging
  • 2014

    λ Lessons (With Steve Krouse)

    With Steve Krouse
    In this hackathon hosted by Y Combinator we created λ Lessons, an open source Haskell course. For this we implemented a custom Haskell parser and interactive visualisation of functional expansion and reduction. Our work generated significant interest in the web development and functional programming community — even a spin-off was made, the very entertaining λ Bubble Pop.

    stevekrouse.github.io/hs.js, chrisuehlinger.com/LambdaBubblePop
  • 2012

    Vriendenpolitiek

    In the run up to the Dutch national elections I built an interactive website that shows exactly how much the different parties agree with each other when voting on bills. This application led to an invitation to the first hackathon ever to be held in a House of Representatives.

    vriendenpolitiek.nl, appsvoordemocratie.nl
  • 2009, 2012

    Fronteers conference (volunteer)

    I volunteered in organizing the Fronteers conference about front-end web development.

    fronteers.nl/congres
  • 2011

    Varsity Coding Contest

    In this programming competition I secured the 5th place within Oxford University.
  • 2011

    Apps for Noord-Holland

    For this open data competition I built a website with practical information about open swimming water, such facilities, health warnings, and so on. It won the golden prize in the category Tourism and Culture.

    janpaulposma.nl/zwemmeninnoordholland
  • 2011

    Huygens Scholarship

    The Huygens Scholarship Programme awarded me a full scholarship to finance my studies in Oxford.
  • 2008 – 2011

    Science Center North (volunteer)

    As an unpaid volunteer, I worked at SCN with children (age 10–18) on electronics and programming projects. I taught about soldering, (embedded) programming, and the drawing of schematics and circuit boards. I also developed a set of example projects. We built oscilloscope games, robots, aquarium discos, and alarm clocks that played the Super Mario and Tetris themes.

    stichting-scn.nl
  • 2010

    IKEA (project manager for student development project)

    I participated in an international software engineering project, coordinated by the university, to develop an internal webapplication for IKEA. This was done in cooperation with students from the Linnaeus University in Växjö. I was the project manager of a team of 11 students.

    ikea.com, lnu.se
  • 2009, 2010

    IWI programming contest

    With Roan Kattouw
    In this university contest we secured the 1st place as a junior team in 2009.
    With Roan Kattouw and Herbert Kruitbosch
    In 2010 we competed in the senior league, and got the 2nd place.
  • 2007 – 2009

    Audivididici (With Simon Roosjen)

    With Simon Roosjen
    In high school I developed a program for learning languages by adding pictures and sound, a method rooted in pedagogical theory. I developed this with my classical languages teacher, who used it successfully in class using (collaborative) exercises. We were awarded funding from Kennisnet Grassroots. The program is also featured in a video about innovation about education (in Dutch). There is still a group of teachers who actively use our tool in class.

    audivididici.nl, grassroots.nl, leraar24.nl/video/409
  • 2009

    Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest

    With Roan Kattouw and Herbert Kruitbosch
    In this national contest we secured the 10th place nationally, and the 1st place within our university.
  • 2009

    Young Talent award

    The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities awarded me a Young Talent award.
  • 2007, 2008

    National Informatics Olympiad

    This competition is aimed at solving algorithmic problems and implementing them. In the national rounds I secured a 5th place in 2007 and 7th place in 2008.
  • 2006, 2007

    RoboChallenge Junior

    With Marc van Beest
    The aim of this national competition was to build a robot that is able to navigate on a grid and perform certain tasks. Our robot won the 1st place in 2006, and the 3rd place in 2007.

  • Various open source projects

    I developed parts of usbpicprog, an open source, open hardware project, consisting of a hardware device and a piece of cross-platform C++ software.
    I founded OpenLaserFrag, an open source, open hardware laser-tag game. I built the original hardware and software, which is now being built on without my involvement.
    I wrote the initial Sublime Text port of import-js, a tool for making working with Javascript dependencies easier.
    On my GitHub page there are some more projects I started or contributed to.

    usbpicprog.org, openlaserfrag.org, github.com/janpaul123
• Other activities include photography, playing the piano, and the occasional skiing and sailing. I enjoy building interesting things, such as a computer in a briefcase, balloon molecules, self-enumerating pangrams, or a voice-controlled apartment. For more information on my personal interests, please visit my websitemy website: janpaulposma.nl.