Our People
Our consulting approach is based on deploying small teams of highly skilled software architects and developers. Experience has shown that a small, focused team of experts will accomplish far more than a larger group of less motivated developers, especially when building complex systems. Redpoint Technologies engineering consultants have years of real-world experience and specialize in creating high performance object-oriented systems.
Our Passion
Our consultants are passionate about technology and value working in small teams where their personal contributions can make a noticeable difference. Redpoint Technologies consultants aren't "one dimensional" programmers-they are equally at home discussing business requirements with end users, preparing project plans or helping clients improve their own internal development practices.
Leadership
Matthew T. Mead - Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
As the first principal consultant, Matthew helped start Redpoint Technologies in 1999 and has been instrumental in the growth of Redpoint and its evolution into a leading agile software services firm. Matthew is passionate about technology and has more than 16 years of experience designing and delivering complex, mission-critical technology solutions using a broad spectrum of technologies. He is energetic and has a proven track record providing technology direction to IT and business executives in a variety of industries such as energy, financial services/trading, travel & transportation, software product development, e-commerce/security, HR, retail, wireless communications, insurance, manufacturing and content management/publishing. Matthew provides technology, methodology and process direction for key clients and is ultimately accountable for all project deliveries.
With experience designing and building both J2EE- and .NET-based systems, Matthew is able to design innovative architectures for mission-critical systems across disparate platforms. He is an advocate for lightweight, streamlined architectures that provide a robust runtime environment while reducing system complexity and development effort. Recent designs have focused on SOA and web services to bridge the gap between incompatible technologies and the use of AJAX to drastically enhance the end-user experience. By leveraging industry best practices, open source initiatives, and agile methodologies, Matthew is able to reduce the cost and risk for large software development initiatives.
He is a member of the SPR Executive Leadership Team and leads the Redpoint company. At Redpoint, Matthew sets the technical vision for Redpoint and is instrumental in the development of all open source initiatives and Redpoint intellectual property. Internally, Matthew is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Redpoint business including sales, recruiting and HR.
Prior to joining Redpoint, Matthew was a founder of an Internet Consulting Group, Pilotstone, in the Chicagoland area. In addition, Matthew designed, built and lead an agile development team building front-, middle- and back-office systems for BP's energy trading business unit. He started his career as a consultant for Arthur Andersen.
Matthew has been a repeat guest graduate-level instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has presented at several national conferences. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Pat Ryan - Vice President
Pat has more than 20 years of software engineering experience developing systems ranging from some of the first in-vehicle navigation systems to multi-tiered web based business applications serving a global client user community.
Before joining Redpoint, Pat was Vice President of Development and Chief Software Architect for Centerpost Communications where he was responsible for the overall architecture, design and implementation of the advanced notification systems driving Fortune 500 companies. Pat has been involved in the detailed implementation of many distributed systems and enterprise application integration projects. Pat has a patent in navigation systems and was a contributing author to a CORBA 3 book.
Pat holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and a MS in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology.
Kevin Hartman - Principal Architect
Kevin has been building systems in a consulting role for over 15 years. As Principal Architect at Redpoint, he is responsible for designing system architectures, leading software development teams, managing client projects and acting as the technical advisor for key clients. He has extensive, cross-industry experience building enterprise applications using object-oriented techniques, leveraging agile methodologies, and incorporating a broad spectrum of technologies including Java/J2EE and Microsoft .NET.
Prior to joining Redpoint, Kevin was founder of the Parthenon Consulting Group in the Chicago area, where he provided application development consulting services to clients in the financial and insurance industries. Prior to Parthenon, Kevin was a senior consultant for Parian Development, where he served as development mentor and consulting lead in a startup software technology company.
Kevin holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jeff Shurts - Principal Architect
Jeff has over twenty years of project management, systems architecture and development experience. His technical experience spans several major shifts in technology; from large mainframe solutions to client/server applications, web applications and beyond. He is particularly interested in OO technology, and has been designing and writing software in OO languages since the early 1990’s. Jeff has also developed and delivered training courses in OO Analysis and Design and Java development.
As a Principal Architect at Redpoint, Jeff is responsible for leading project teams, managing all aspects of project execution, designing system and component architectures, implementing, installing and managing systems, and acting as an interface to client managers, developers and end users. He has extensive experience building custom object-oriented applications in many different technologies, with an emphasis in Java/J2EE. He has functional experience across many industries.
Jeff holds a BS degree in Information Systems from Eastern Illinois University.