# John Gieske > Senior Software Engineer Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johngieske I'm an seasoned engineering manager, full-stack application developer, technical lead, and Linux nerd. I see myself as a "jack of all trades", ready and willing to jump in and help out. Are you looking for a "details person"? Do you need to bring order to your chaos? Do you need creative solutions? You need an army of one? Then I'm your guy. Looking for a cog in your machine or a faceless minion? Need to boil the ocean? Are you trying to solve the impossible? Then I'm probably not interested. In my spare time, I'm a maker, photographer, AI artist, and world traveler. When I am looking for a job, it is full-time, working in either the South Bay Area (Silicon Valley) or permanent remote. I am not willing to relocate or travel frequently. ## Work Experience ### Principal Engineer @ Nybsys Inc Jan 2023 – Present | San Jose, California, United States Working on disruptive LTE and 5G technologies ### Senior Software Engineer @ Akraya, Inc. Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 ### Senior Software Engineer @ Self Employed Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | San Jose, California, United States Currently doing ad-hoc projects: * Nybsys: Cisco IP Phone push-to-talk voice client written in Node.js / Express.js / Handlebars.js / i18Next.js / Jest.js ### Principal Server Architect @ Instant Connect Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Remote (Chicago) Spent my time: * Supporting the legacy Instant Connect Server (Java) * Lead the initial development of the next generation ICE Desktop using ES6, React.js, Electron.js, Node.js, Redux, Yarn, Jest, Enzyme, Bitbucket Pipelines, and Microsoft Visual Code. * Ported our Cisco IP Phone XML client to the new ICE Server, which exposed me to Java 8, Lombok, Handlebars.js, Kubernetes/Docker, Skaffold, and Gradle. * Scrum Master for the JavaScript team ### Tech Lead @ Cisco Systems Jan 2006 – Jan 2018 | San Jose, CA I worked in Cisco's incubator for new products. In response to the events of 9/11/2001, Cisco decided to solve the communication break-downs that occurred between different agencies responding to the crisis. Cisco IPICS (later renamed Instant Connect) is a collaboration system specializing in “push-to-talk” style voice communication that integrated with radios from many different vendors, PCs, IP phones, PSTN phones and smartphones. I climbed from software engineer (contractor, 2005) to full-time (2006) to team leader in charge of the core server team. Later on, I also lead the Windows & Mobile client teams, and served as the scrum master. Over the final 5 years, I took on a mixed role (75% mgmt / 25% dev), and reported to the Director of Engineering. I had 18 direct reports. Achievements: • Presented our product at Cisco conferences & hackathons • Deployed our product at several key customer sites • Supported major customer accounts, including multiple LSIs • Our team came in 2nd place for the 2010 Cisco Pioneer Award for Most Innovative Product Major Technical Achievements: • Built JSP/Struts based administration webapp • Deep system-level integration between our webapp, OS & DB • Built huge web services APIs • Built an IVR system for telephony clients • Built a X509 cert management & distribution system • Built a “warm standby” high availability system • Designed an MQTT based “SMS-like” messaging system for our different client endpoints • Android: Integrated Bluetooth (SPP, HFP, HID) devices, built a “PTT SDK” for partners & prototyped indoor location tracking • Maintained Maven build infrastructure, engineering lab & equipment Tech Stack: • CORE: Java 8 • WEB: Tomcat, HTML 4, CSS, JSP, Struts, WebServices, SOAP, REST, XMPP, MQTT • DB: Informix, Redis, Postgress, JDBC • BUILD/SCM: Maven, Ant, git, svn, clearcase • CI: Jenkins • OS: VMware, RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) • SCRIPT: BASH, TCL • CISCO: CUCM, UCCX, IOS, IP Phone XML Services, UCS ### Software Engineer @ Dynamic Ventures Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | San Jose, CA April 2005 - March 2006: S3BU - Software engineering contractor at Cisco Systems. Worked on Cisco IPICS server product focusing on the tomcat/struts web administrative application. ### Staff Engineer @ Selectica Jan 2000 – Jan 2005 | San Jose, CA Developed several GUI administrative applications using both Swing and J2EE (Struts), as well as a JMX/SNMP agent. ### Software Applications Engineer III @ Sherpa Systems Jan 1997 – Jan 2000 | Milpitas, CA Helped debug and maintain Sherpa Works for Windows, a document management system written in C++/MFC. About a year later, I learned Java and went on to design and develop Sherpa Admin, an administration console written in Java 1.2 and Swing. ### Software Engineer @ Sunrise Imaging Jan 1995 – Jan 1997 | Fremont, CA I worked night and day at this small 25 employee startup. I wrote a suite of high-speed microfilm document scanning applications for Windows in C++/MFC for their proprietary hardware. Workflow included image acquisition, image edge detection and rotation, digital image processing, and sub-image extraction. Also acted as pre/post Sales Engineer, Hardware Assembly, Tech Writer, and Professional Services. Represented company at trade shows and helped deploy systems at customer sites. ## Education ### BS in Computer Science California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo ### HSD in College/University Preparatory and Advanced High School/Secondary Diploma Program Bellarmine College Preparatory ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/john-gieske-17872b --- Source: https://flows.cv/johngieske JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johngieske/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12