tl;dr
- ara t. howard
- boulder, colorado // palmer, alaska // tabernash, colorado // los angeles, california
- drawohara@drawohara.io
- 303-747-3468
- https://github.com/ahoward
- https://independent.academia.edu/arahoward
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/arahoward/
- https://www.instagram.com/drawohara/
- https://drawohara.io/
readme
creating things out of virtual nothingness remains my favorite artform, even after 20 years as a professional software architect. right after traversing natural landscapes and petting dogs.
in my career i have designed custom databases and super-compute clusters to enable large scale meteorological verification studies before the cloud existed. designed algorithms to detect the edge of cities based on nighttime light signals combining the leading edge of computer vision techniques with geophysical data. built fast static website site generators aimed at security and scale when php was the only game in town. contributed to many open source projects, such the then nascent ruby on rails. and released over 100 of my own, some downloaded millions of times.
in my over ten years running the impact start-up focused software agency dojo4, working across hundreds of projects, and mentoring dozens of budding tech stars companies full of bright eyed entrepreneurs, i have been fortunate enough to see the light and dark parts of many software based journeys. it has been an eye opening education learning first hand just how much pain tiny and seemingly unimportant technical decisions can cause for future you, how focusing and refocusing on the three most important things over and over is the key to building great software that actually helps people, and witnessing how ruthless commitment to mission and vision can change the world one byte at a time.
in software as in mountaineering, although i appreciate an expedition style, i prefer, and have seen much greater success, with a fast and light approach. one that focuses on steel threads, ideals, atoms, ethics, and systems instead of just letting the market define what engineering tasks should be on the board. approaches that require personal dedication, sacrifice, and real work to execute on.
i am currently in a unique position, having reduced my own life footprint dramatically in order to create space for creativity. its because so many big problems still exist, and i would love to talk about yours, and how hard we can go, in order to solve it. big problems, are big fun.
work
cooperative institute for research in environmental sciences at the university of colorado boulder (cires) @ forecast systems laboratory (fsl), national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa)
– student assistant (sa) (1998-2000)
- data visualization (r/s/idl/matlab)
- low-level optimizations of meteorological algorithms (c/fortran/lisp)
- ported the ruc weather model from big-endian cray machines to little-endian linux nodes
- ported ruc weather model across y2k code boundary
- began contributing to open-source projects
cires @ integrated systems group (isg), noaa
– professional research assistant (pra) (2000-2003)
- developed hardware and software platforms for 24x7 high-availability environments for meteorological data ingest and dissemination (ruby, perl, ml, c, c++, bash, java)
- developed methodology, software libraries, database, and services for bi-temporal meta-data support regression analyses over large-scale real-time meteorological models
- released ~10 open-source libraries into the ruby, perl, and c ecosystems
cires @ defense meteorological satellite program (dmsp), noaa
– professional research assistant (pra) (2003-2007)
- studied global population dynamics via nighttime lights
- developed novel user-space super-computing methodologies for research scientists
- developed approaches and techniques for edge detection along high-rate-of-change regions on city boundaries
- released over 100 open-source libraries
- published research papers and articles
codeforpeople.com, llc.
– founder (2007-2010)
- developed custom solutions for boulder’s emerging start-up space in ruby, c, and java
- wrote early lines of code for companies later acquired by oracle and twitter
dojo4, lca/b-corp
– founder, partner, principal (2010-2020)
- developed custom solutions for over 200 tech start-ups
- founded and chaired the boulder awesome chapter
- won a ruby hero award
- mentored at techstars and unreasonable institute
mainstreet.com
– principal engineer (2020-2021)
- developed a mongodb-based archive, caching, and analytics layer for external payroll data
- introduced key technologies and design patterns into a rapidly evolving code base
matanuskafrontiertrek.com
– founder, guide (2021-present)
- developed a nextjs, strapi, and render.com-based platform for a pet project/side business
mountainhigh.codes
– founder, principal engineer (2021-present)
- developed fast and light engineering solutions for non-profits and mountain companies using 11ty, nextjs, and other static-first technologies
- bringing simple and cost effective ai solutions to individuals, non-profits, and small businesses
syntheticecho.com
– founder, principal engineer (2024-present)
- services and software that bring the ‘social voice’ to artificial intelligence applications and research
education
university of alaska anchorage, anchorage, alaska
– student/athelete (1992-1994)
- studied biochemistry and competed in d1 nordic skiing
university of colorado at boulder, boulder, colorado
– student/athelete (1999-2003)
- studied computer science and designed a senior year project for noaa/cires
- earned a 10th place finish at collegiate nationals and transitioned into the workplace at noaa/cires as a research associate