Mobile: (+91) 98230 16832 • Email: pranav@pranavnegandhi.com
Summary
- A good web and multimedia developer with 10 years experience in developing applications for the desktop and RIA’s
- Well grounded in programming fundamentals such as data structures, algorithms, procedural and object-oriented programming and relational theory
- Strong grasp of several languages, mainly ActionScript (including Flex and AIR), PHP, SQL, JavaScript and some C
- Extensive experience building semantic web front-ends with HTML/CSS along with tackling cross-browser incompatibilities
- Experience working on web frameworks such as CodeIgniter, CakePHP, jQuery and YUI
- Proven skills in designing and building software frameworks from the ground up for business applications, e-learning courseware and web-based games
- Close association with design teams throughout my career to appreciate UX design and its inherent value
- Interested in online and mobile games, data visualization tools and web-based application front-ends
Experience
Since June 2010 / Lemon Design / Pune
Head, Technology
- Heading the software products department at Lemon Design
- Working with stakeholders to define software approach based on business strategy
- Realize product vision through architectural leadership, hands-on development and project management
- Laying down development standards for architecture, process and code
- Grew a team of technical staff from 2 members to 8
- Mentoring team members for new technologies and processes
August 2007-June 2010 / Texity Systems / Pune
Senior Web Developer - Design for User Experience
- Part of the Design for User Experience group working for Qualcomm Enterprise Services
- Team leader for the prototyping team, responsible for developing full-featured software proofs-of-concept as as well as training tools
- Extensive interaction with the design and development teams to mediate between design features and technical limitations
January 2005-August 2007 / Fractal Ink / Mumbai
Team Lead - Web and Multimedia Development
- Led teams up to 5 people to develop interactive websites, online games and multimedia presentations
- Used common web and multimedia technologies such as PHP-MySQL, ASP-MS Access and ActionScript
- Learnt basics of design patterns and began to apply them during the development process
- Introduced development practices such as coding conventions, version control, defect tracking, daily builds and functional specifications
- Initiated the development of internal tools such as attendance and time trackers
- Also performed project management and client servicing duties for several projects
February 2004-December 2004 / Cyber Backoffice / Mumbai
Marketing Executive and Project Coordinator – E-branding
- Led teams of 2-4 people in the creation of e-learning projects
- Used Macromedia Director for almost all development
- Gained proficiency in object oriented development and relational databases
- Established coding conventions and code review guidelines
January 2001–August 2003 / Learnet India Ltd. / Mumbai
Team Lead - Simulation-based Learning
- Led teams of 2-4 people in the creation of e-learning projects
- Used Macromedia Director for almost all development
- Gained proficiency in object oriented development and relational databases
- Established coding conventions and code review guidelines
November 1999–December 2000 / Computer Canvas / Mumbai
Multimedia Developer
- Designed and implemented multimedia projects such as CD-ROM’s, kiosks and online games, using Macromedia Director
- Also provided support as a 3D artist, using 3D Studio MAX
Education
1998-1999 / Jai Hind College / Mumbai
Completed F.Y.J.C (Arts) from Mumbai University
1996-1997 / St. Mary’s School / Mumbai
Completed I.C.S.E. from the Delhi Board
Projects
I have taken up several programming projects during my spare time. Some of the more notable ones are mentioned below.
PXTR - A custom photo and website management tool
I have been maintaining a website of my photographs since several years. PXTR is a distillation of my highly customized workflow to take photographs from film or digital card to the website, and later, an archive. It has its roots in several scripts and custom PHP extensions that I had patched together over the years to automate conversion, retrieval and publishing. But creating a product out of those scripts has been an involving and exciting task because of the related branding, usability and application architecture concerns.
My main goals in the design of PXTR have been easy photo storage and publishing, a custom version control setup and one-step backups.
Flash class library for game development
After going through a few projects in Flash it dawned upon me that we were reinventing the wheel for common functionalities every time – content loaders, UI widgets and handling keyboard and mouse events.
I had already created a broad plan for a class library several years ago, to be developed in Director. I fleshed out details and implemented it in Flash. Since the library core is fairly extensible, new functionalities can be added as required.
A chat application in Macromedia Director, using the Multiuser Server
Macromedia introduced their Multiuser Server with version 7 of Director. This server was aimed and allowing developers to build collaborative applications in Director. Samples that were provided with the installation were a chat and whiteboard application and a tic-tac-toe game. I took upon the exercise of building a chat application, based upon the sample that was provided.
The application core abstracted the broad API of the server into something more task-oriented. The script was optimized for creating chat rooms, and hence had a number of features to automate common tasks such as updating user lists, sending messages to groups of users and managing rooms.
The core was one of the earliest MUS abstraction layers to be released as open-source, and was well appreciated by the developer community.
Entrepreneur - A basic double-entry bookkeeping application
Although I have never been much of an accounts fan, I found it very natural that accounting principles be expressed in a computer program. For my final project in Computer Studies during the 9th standard, I used GW-BASIC to write a basic double-entry bookkeeping application. In addition to keeping track of income and outgoings, it also let users note down investments. It had a feature that alerted users when the maturity date of an investment was reached.