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      I am a technologist, manager, father and soccer fan. At Appian, I manage front-end web and mobile engineers building cutting edge features. At home, I help my wonderful wife raise our 2 crazy boys. In my spare time I root for Manchester City, read, travel, and geek out on technology.

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Resume

Who am I?

Hello, my name is Jed Fonner and I’m a manager of software development at Appian. I have a very strong engineering, technology consulting, and project management background. I have over ten years of experience with business process management, enterprise architecture, user interface design, and J2EE enterprise web application development. I have over seven years of agile project management experience leading and coaching groups of between 3 and 15 members. I am extremely knowledgeable in process design, configuration, and development on the Appian platform. I have helped introduce Agile Methodologies to two separate Appian departments and acted as coach and scrummaster for multiple development teams.

I have recently transitioned back to the Engineering department from my previous role as the Director of the Center of Excellence in Professional Services. I always enjoy a challenge and I am excited to be part of Appian Engineering again as we take the product to new heights. My past work includes managing our group of senior Appian Architects, being an engineering manager of multiple base-product development teams, and providing architectural oversight of large-scale process-based applications and components for GSA, FTA, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Department of Veterans Affairs, FEMA, and FDIC. I have helped author and promote Appian Center of Excellence (CoE) best practices and CoE programs such as the Appian Certification program. Lastly, I have presented multiple different sessions for over 150 attendees at Appian World 2012, 2013, 2014, 2014 and 2015.

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Key Qualifications

Director, Software Development, Appian Corporation 2016-present

I am currently a Director in the Engineering department of Appian. I oversee a group of 40+ engineers, product owners, quality engineers and others (1/3 the total Engineering department) as we develop important user-facing features of the Appian BPM app platform. I am responsible for planning, management and execution our software development life-cycle. I work with other senior members of my group to define our strategy and present it to stakeholders. I spearhead and manage the continued evolution of our software architecture, including our recent move from GWT to React. I also serve as the agile coach for one development team that employs a blend of agile methodologies including Scrum, Lean and XP. In addition, I am the HR manager for between 15 and 20 direct reports and am heavily involved in recruiting.

Senior Manager, Software Development, Appian Corporation 2015-2016

I managed between 9 and 20 engineers developing important user-facing features for the Appian core product using many technologies, including Java, GWT, Hibernate, CSS, XML and Javascript. I also serve as the agile coach for development teams that employ a blend of agile methodologies. My fellow development managers and I worked to ensure that features are delivered on time and with high quality.

Director, Center of Excellence, Appian Corporation 2013-2015

I served as the Director of the Appian Center of Excellence. I managed the group of Appian Architects in order to deliver key enablement programs to our customers, partners and consultants. I was a stakeholder in our PMO group and I liaisoned with our Engineering group on product development.

Appian Architect, Center of Excellence, Appian Corporation 2012-2013

I served as a senior member of the Appian Center of Excellence, providing expert architectural vision and guidance to a variety of high profile government and commercial projects. I mentor and direct junior Center of Excellence members and continue to act as liaison between the Professional Services and Product Development organizations within Appian. I developed and manage the Appian Reference Applications, the Appian Certification program, and our internal Continuing Education efforts.

Principal Consultant, Center of Excellence, Appian Corporation 2010-2012

I actively contributed to the Appian project delivery methodology by writing articles, whitepapers and best practices for delivering process application with Appian. I maintained and improved CoE tools, extensions and plug-ins in order to promote the usage and adoption of standard best practices across Appian professional services organization. I instituted department-wide code-reviews and drove the adoption of Scrum methodology by teams within the Professional Services organization. I provided expert guidance and oversight for project architecture, implementation and custom development. I architected both process-driven as well as case management solutions at various professional services clients. I developed advanced J2EE functionality for professional services clients. I served as a liaison between the Professional Services and Product Development organizations within Appian.

J2EE Engineering Manager, Technology, Appian Corporation 2007-2010

I was responsible for managing ten J2EE developers across multiple base-product engineering teams. I reported directly to the VP of Software Development. In conjunction with the VP and one other engineering manager, I managed the delivery of three major Appian Enterprise product releases and multiple service packs. I helped define product direction and architecture for all front-end features. I spearheaded the adoption of test-driven development methodologies within the Java team and helped introduce Scrum as the primary development methodology within the Appian Technology department. I acted as the primary scrummaster for multiple Scrum teams.

SaaS Engineering Manager, Technology, Appian Corporation 2006-2007

I managed a five person team developing Appian’s software-as-a-service offering. I oversaw the roll-out and deployment of Appian’s BPM software to a distributed, on-demand environment based on Amazon EC2 and S3 cloud platform. I helped spec, design and implement the distributed architecture, integration points, and improved usability features. I contributed numerous features back to the core product.

Solutions Engineering Manager, Technology, Appian Corporation 2004-2006

As an Engineering Manager, I was responsible for a team of 6-10 developers building J2EE and process-based reusable applications. I lead the development of two new products for Appian: a Government Procurement solution aimed at Federal and Local government and a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance solution for small to medium sized public companies. I designed multiple new innovative features on the Appian platform that are still in use today.

Senior Technical Consultant, Professional Services, Appian Corporation 2002-2004

I was responsible for the deployment, support, and further development of Appian Enterprise Version 3.2 on the Navy Knowledge Online (NKO) SIPRNet Portal to meet the needs of the U.S. Navy. The classified deployment utilized a 3-tiered approach using BEA, Kdb and Convera on a Sun Solaris platform. The completed system handled collaboration and instant messaging between SIPRNET users, and included wizard-driven web interfaces, an electronic document management system and digital signatures. The portal went live in June of 2003 and at its peak had a user base of over 5,000 concurrent users. Also contributed features and support for the NKO NIPRNet Portal.

Employment History

2002-Present

  • Appian Corporation
  • Reston, VA

Patents

  • 20040030697 System and method for online feedback - The present invention relates to a feedback system for adding feedback functionality to an online content management system without altering the stored online content. The feedback system includes a feedback submission module for providing the content system with information enabling a browser displaying hypertext received from the content management system to select text for specific commenting, providing a feedback form when a portion of the hypertext is highlighted, and storing the selected text along with feedback received with the feedback form after it is returned by the browser.

Education History

University of Pennsylvania, 1997-2002

School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the Wharton School - Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology

  • Dual degree: Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Bachelor of Science in Economics
  • Engineering major: Computer Science; Wharton concentration: Business Management
  • Cumulative GPA: 3.8
  • Honors: Magna Cum Laude, Benjamin Franklin Scholar, Joseph Wharton Scholar, Dean’s List: 1997-2001

Skills

Technologies: JavaScript (ES2015), React, Java, HTML5, CSS3, XML, SQL, Web Services

Software Platforms: Appian, Node, JBoss, Hibernate, Oracle, MySQL

Methodologies/IDEs/Tools: Scrum and other Agile Methodologies, IntelliJ, Eclipse, Git, Ant, JUnit, Apache JMeter

Certifications: Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)