50th BirthdayI was born in Mexico City in the sixties.  I attended school in the “Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México” (or the National Autonomous University of México) where I studied Computer Engineering.  I started my career in professional Software Development on 1979 for the Metal Mechanic industry, which included software for accounting, payroll, engineering processes and CAD, most of it in an Apple II+ in Apple Basic, Pascal and 6502 assembly language. Among the engineering projects that I developed there was a complex system to trace figures for custom assembly of pipes and tubing for industrial applications, and a system to compute pressure for air and water tanks which was used to design pressure vessels.

In 1985 I joined Fralc Consultores, a software development company where I became the director of engineering, specializing on accounting software under Windows 1.0 and later.  Since this was an early system I had to develop printer drivers, system components at the Bios level, and I had to develop a whole ISAM layer for the database.  Later I also worked on OS/2 and Microsoft SQL Server 1.0.  My team and I were one of the three development houses doing Window development in México.  When we ported the system to Windows 3.0, I developed the Generic/Text Only driver for Windows, which shipped with Windows 3.1 and subsequent releases.

During my studies I became quite proficient at compilers and designing languages, and as such I was asked to be a professor at the Universidad La Salle in Mexico City where I taught compiler construction for a couple of years to students of the fifth year, a stint that ended right before my move to the United States in 1992.

Chichen-ItzaOne company in the United States had their sight on developing a version for their flagship product, The Coordinator, under Windows, in their Mexico City lab, and as such I was recruited to work for Action Technologies in 1991 as their Windows expert.  That was the turning point of my career.  By then I had 3 children and I was looking for a better way of life.  It was a matter of time, and in 1992 they decided to offer me a permanent position to work for them as an immigrant, in the city of Alameda, CA.  I moved to the United States in September of 1992, and during the process of obtaining a permanent status in the United States I worked for this organization until 1999.  We developed workflow software based on the theories of human communication of Fernando Flores, a complete system developed for the Microsoft platform.  We were one of the leaders of the workflow industry and I participated in 4 patents on innovations that I brought forward in the organization.

The next step was working for newScale, now part of Cisco, where I was the founding engineer, serving as Director of Engineering and Architect.  We created a system for the IT services industry to keep track of requests, and to manage its workflow until completion, including an innovative approach to workflow management.  I was part of the backbone of the organization for nine years.

Fruit-StandIn 2009 I was recruited to serve as the Senior Engineering Manager of Yahoo! Groups.  During the Yahoo! layoffs of 2010 I also took charge of Delicious, during its transfer to Avos, and of Yahoo! Pulse, the profile property of Yahoo!  We did develop a new web site for Yahoo! Groups that did not see the light of day due to the layoffs. After two years, the environment in the applications division of Yahoo! was not propitious to growth, and so I decided to leave.

I joined Payvment, Inc., a small startup that is now part of Intuit, where we developed the most important f-commerce platform (commerce through Facebook).  As their architect I did setup the analytics and recommendations engine.  With this platform you could setup a store within a Facebook page, promote your products and as a user you could get the recommended products related to prior behaviors.

I currently work at Oracle (Responsys Product) where I am a Senior Software Architect in the applications team.  We are a SaaS company with the leading product for e-mail marketing for enterprises. Among others I have:

  • I architected and, with a team of three engineers, delivered the Interact Content Repository (ICR) which is a server side system to manage and store content for campaigns in a multi-tenant fashion behind a Jersey/REST subsystem.
  • I was in charge of the architecture and design of the Programs platform. This platform is a workflow engine that drives a set of interactions for a given individual, through which you can perform follow up conversations via email, SMS, or push to the user devices.
  • Architected the AppCloud subsystem, as a way to integrate applications into the Responsys product.
  • I also architected the Audience engine, a platform for filtering individual through a visual workflow interface.
  • I architect the multi-channel initiative. Through this, we can target individuals in their mobile devices, or multiple addresses, without duplication.
  • I architected and implemented the Responsys Personalization Language, or RPL. This is the language used to embed in personalization templates for email, SMS and Push. It is a derivative of freemarker, with significant additions to the language itself.
  • As an architect of the Applications team I manage the architecture for multiple UI products, including the Email Message Designer, Campaign Workbook, Content Library, and others.
  • Currently leading the Jarvis project, the next generation marketing application

Jaime and RoxxanneI remarried in 2010 to my beautiful wife Roxanne. We currently live in the East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area, in California. She works in Richmond for the Healthy Richmond initiative of The California Endowement. You can see an article for one of the initiatives in the Richmond Pulse, although this is just a part of all she does. I am very proud of her. As for my children, they are all adults now, trying to live the life that I envisioned for them when I moved to this country. I have seven beautiful grandchildren.