Great People

Carl Youngblood

Carl Youngblood is an avid software engineer with over ten years of professional experience, who works hard to develop applications that people really love to use. He did undergraduate studies in Music, Portuguese and Computer Science, eventually receiving a bachelors degree in Portuguese from Brigham Young University and a masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

In addition to his experience with other technologies, Carl has been using Ruby since it was first introduced to the US market by the Pragmatic Programmers back in 2001, and has been developing applications with Rails since its first release in 2004. He is actively involved in the Ruby and Open Source communities, and participates regularly in conferences and local users groups. Carl has helped to increase the Ruby community’s exposure by founding Confreaks, a company that specializes in recording and providing wifi for conferences, including RubyConf and other regional Ruby conferences.

As Surgeworks’ Rails Practice Manager, Carl helps to communicate with customers, gather requirements and coordinate team efforts, in addition to working with code. Carl possesses a unique combination of communications skills and technical expertise that allows him to develop ideal solutions for our customers.

Brad Midgley

Brad Midgley is a software engineer with 15 years of experience in systems and web programming. He earned BS and MS degrees in Computer Science, from the University of Utah and University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, respectively.

Brad’s original experience with web applications focused on Java. The challenges of choosing the right components in an application stack and working with specific technologies like web standards and Javascript have transferred well into the Ruby on Rails environment. The downsides of working with Java served as great motivators to work with a more agile framework like Rails. Brad’s interests in technology include some diverse areas. He works with the Bluez team on implementing Bluetooth under Linux and enjoys writing software of all kinds for small computers.

Brad has written a course management application in Rails, together with a small team under his management. This application is used by the Utah Education Network to organize technology curricula for Utah’s public school teachers. Brad has since used Rails to help local companies quickly build and adapt their applications on the web. These include tailoring a highly customized ordering system for a Utah company’s retail operations and helping a large bank to manage and audit its warehouse metadata.

Jordan Curzon

Jordan has been using computers in one form or another since birth, and has been developing software professionally for the last five years. He has experience with many different technologies, including Ruby on Rails, Perl, Java, and MySQL databases.

During his university studies, Jordan worked for the Brigham Young University IT department, developing web control panels for backend systems, conducting network management and monitoring, and working to improve various processes. He developed a software build configuration management system for Novell, Inc. In addition to his software development skills, he has extensive system administration experience, and recently worked as IT Manager and part-time developer for Construction Capital Source, a construction lending firm. Jordan received a bachelors degree in Information Technology from Brigham Young University.

At Surgeworks, Jordan has most recently been involved with developing rich-client applications for the Ext.js AJAX framework that interact with Rails-based web services, for which he has written some useful Ext extensions. He is a very efficient coder who knows what customers want and delivers it promptly, allowing customers to be involved in the feedback process and keep an eye on the their projects’ progress.

Marcus Derencius

Marcus Derencius fell in love with the Internet around 1994 and since then has become a passionate web developer. He has over 12 years of professional experience with technologies like ASP, Perl, PHP and most recently, Ruby.

Marcus’ natural curiosity also caused Linux to win a place in his heart, and for the last 10 years he has been lovingly caring for Debians, Red Hats, Ubuntus and CentOSes.

Being open to different experiences, Marcus has worked for a wide variety of companies, from startups to large enterprises, where he has gained a strong understanding of various software utilities, content management, software projects estimation and planning, and intranets. He recently obtained certification in Function Point Analysis.

At Surgeworks, Marcus has been involved in Ruby on Rails development and deployment, and now manages the Brazilian team, helping coordinate projects and providing orientation and leadership to other team members.

Outside of computers, Marcus enjoys being outdoors with his wife and son, and playing water sports.

Carlos Brando

Carlos Brando is hooked on programming. He has been developing software for over ten years, starting out in Visual Basic and moving on to C, C++, Java, C#, and now Ruby. He has worked for a number of companies, including Portugal Telecom Group, AT&T Latin America, DirecTV, SKY and VISA.

Carlos has one of the best-known Rails blogs in Brazil. He is active in the Brazilian Rails community and participates in several open-source projects. He has presented at various Ruby-related events in Brazil, including RejectConf SP’07. He is also working on a book about Rails 2.1 which will be distributed for free on the Internet. Carlos published the Custom Resource Name Plugin, which makes it easier to develop a Rails app with localized URLs.

In addition to his professional interests, Carlos and his wife volunteer as instructors for the deaf and mute. He regularly teaches sign language and does interpreting.

Mauro Dalu

Mauro Dalu is a software architect with over 10 years of experience based in Rome, Italy. He began his tech career as a web designer and Mac system administrator, specializing in development with open source web frameworks. Mauro has an intuitive knack for usability and design, and is a great communicator with a special skill for identifying customers’ needs. A compulsive designer, he has made it a constant goal not to suggest to the customer any solution that he would not use himself.

As Surgeworks’ PHP Practice Manager, Mauro manages a team of developers based in Europe and India. He is creative and agile in his approach to his daily work, and tries to maintain a direct and deep involvement with his team, which he finds to be a critical factor for success in remote development.

Tomislav Bilic

Tomislav Bilic is a senior developer with extensive experience in developing online stores. He has developed web stores in multiple PHP frameworks, including osCommerce, CRE Loaded and Magento. He also has experience developing Wordpress-based web sites. Before joining the Surgeworks team, Tomislav owned and operated Escape Ltd., a Croatian company that specialized in web site and online storefront development.

Tomislav’s focus on close interaction with the client helps him to understand their needs and develop ideal solutions for them. He is experienced in handling all aspects of a project, from the initial design, on to development, user acceptance testing, marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

Radu Cojocaru

Radu Cojocaru is a Computer Science student in Romania with 5 years of professional experience. He is a detail-oriented person who loves challenges and finding solutions to unique problems. Radu started programming on Windows but recently switched to Mac, becoming a MacBook user and Apple fan.

At Surgeworks, Radu develops web applications on top of WordPress platform and participates in Rails projects. He communicates directly with clients to ensure their requirements are well understood and executed.

Sergei Inyushkin

Sergei Inyushkin has been programming since he was 17. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional who has taught courses in MS development in his native country of Russia. As a freelancer managing a team of developers, Sergei’s team was ranked in the top 50 among nearly 200,000 programming service providers throughout the world on RentACoder.com. He has contributed to approximately 50 different projects in various fields, including social networking applications, investment and finance, healthcare, aviation, metallurgy and entertainment. Sergei has been a member of the Surgeworks team since August of 2007.