ISU Computer
Science Alumni
With Software Engineering Experience
Brian McMaster
Brian graduated from Iowa State in 1996 and works for Microsoft Corp. in
Redmond, WA.
He is a Test Architect in the Developer Division. Brian’s primary responsibilities
are to develop and maintain automated quality assurance tools for various
technologies including HTML, Win32, Office, Windows Forms, and Windows Presentation
Foundation. These tools help Software Design Engineers in Test to write
automated tests to drive the graphical user interfaces for their applications
and perform automated verifications to ensure the quality of their software.
These tools have been used to help ship software such as Windows, .NET,
Visual Studio, VB, C#, and other products. Additionally, Brian is responsible
for investigating, designing, implementing, and evangelizing new tools and
processes to improve software testing efficiency across the company.
Ryan McKenna
Ryan is a 1999 graduate of the ISU Computer Science department and works
for Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, MO as a software architect.
Some of his high level responsibilities as a software architect include:
- Responsible for overall quality of a solution
- Collaborate and review software requirements
- Provide technical designs for software implementation
- Review test plans and procedures for the solution
- Develop and review code pertaining to the solution
- Mentor software engineers
Adam S. Ricklefs
Adam is a Spring 2003 Computer Science graduate who has been with
Accenture for the entire four years since. Accenture is a global management
consulting firm that has over 100,000 employees worldwide, 30,000 of which
are in the US.
Accenture is a consulting company, and therefore Adam jumps from client
to client approximately every eight months. While at Accenture, he has had
a number of roles, a few including software development. Specifically, Adam
has developed a forecasting model for a large cable company to predict the
number of subscribers that a client would have given market penetration,
time since launch, etc. This tool utilized SQL Server as well as a VB front
end. He also assisted in developing a training assessment database for a
large telecommunications company that calculated when an employee likely
needed training.
Nick Althoff
Graduated in 2003
Nick Althoff graduated in 2003 from the Depatment of Computer Science and
currently works for a mid sized consulting firm in downtown Chicago called
Project Leadership Associates as a Developer/Consultant. He develops web
applications using .NET. Previous to this Nick worked for a large consulting
firm in Chicago called Accenture as a Senior Analyst doing database/SQL
work as well as .NET development. Prior to Accenture he worked in Kansas
City as a software engineer developing win32 applications in C++ 6.0.
Meghan (Hilmer) Parson
Graduated in 2003
Meghan Parsons is currently in Omaha working for ConagraFoods as a web developer.
She works on internal web applications using Java, and is in the process
of learning C# as well.
Jared Winston
Graduated in 2000
Jared Winston has been working as a software engineer with National Instruments
in Austin, Texas for the previous seven years. NI is a Test and Automation
company. His first project was to design and develop a graphical editor
for creating digital test pattern. He has also worked on a large scale graphical
measurement and analysis tool called LabVIEW SignalExpress, while his main
focus has been on application software. "But I have also worked in
many different areas including embedded systems, high speed data streaming
and storage, and hardware driver development. Our main programming technologies
are C and C++. NI also has developed it's own programming tool called LabVIEW.
"
Winston says some of the responsibilities of an experienced software engineer
are:
- Defines projects and technologies for the team
- Designs and implements difficult features
- Thorough knowledge of the technologies of our customers
- Facilitates decision making
- Mentors junior engineers
