My name is Jeff Handley. I’ve been creating software for over 20 years. I have passion for leading geo-distributed teams to build frameworks and applications that provide end-user productivity and delight.
By focusing on intuitive, composable, and extensible frameworks, the teams I’ve worked with have a proven ability to deliver short-term developer productivity and long-term maintainability for web applications ranging from 10 screens to over 1000. I’ve been recognized as a compassionate people manager with an unparalleled sense of ownership in products and user experiences. These traits have helped me lead many teams through successful releases.
I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at several conferences including Øredev, MonkeySpace, OuterConf, and Silicon Valley Code Camp. I am the author of the DataAnnotations validation features built into .NET, the Strickland JavaScript validation framework, and a few other npm packages, and more. I have architected and led development for systems in many domains and used by millions of users, some of which have been in production for nearly 20 years.
Microsoft (2019-present)
I’m an Engineering Manager on the .NET Libraries team. We build the lowest level managed code that all other .NET code is built on. I rejoined Microsoft in December 2019.
SAP Concur (2015-2019)
I was previously the Senior Director of Web UI Engineering at SAP Concur. I worked with the teams that deliver the core UI components, the UI infrastructure frameworks, the corporate travel booking experience, the expense experience, and the setup experience for the SMB expense and invoice products.
While at SAP Concur, I had the opportunity to learn what it takes to foster remote work and support from-distributed teams. My group there included teams in Bellevue, WA, USA and Prague, Czech Republic. We also had team members who worked from home across several states and time zones. I partnered with teams in California; Texas; Virginia; Maidenhead, UK; Prague; and Frankfurt, Germany.
Microsoft (2008-2015)
Many folks know of me from my first time working at Microsoft. I was the Engineering Manager for the NuGet Package manager, WCF RIA Services, ASP.NET Web Pages, Razor, and a few other projects. I helped open-source the Silverlight SDK and RIA Services. I led NuGet from being a small open-source project to shipping as part of Visual Studio, building a team around it along the way.
While at Microsoft, I was the lead developer of the validation validation features built into the .NET Framework’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace. My work included IValidatableObject, ValidationResult, ValidationContext, and Validator, among other implementation details introduced in .NET 4.0. Those features delivered validation functionality into ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms, WCF RIA Services, Silverlight, and WPF.
Early Career
My first professional programming experience was at a small civil engineering firm in Milford, OH. When tasked with performing complex math calculations for projects, I decided to automate the calculations with a QuickBasic application that saved the company time on many projects.
I then joined SDRC (now Siemens) at the age of 17. There, I worked in the quality certification group where I conducted manual testing, helped the group automate large portions of our test suite, and built intranet applications for managing the test suites and results. I also created the company’s HR website including an online job application form where I used JavaScript for the first time. Back then, only form controls could be manipulated.
After SDRC, I spent over 10 years building business systems for companies of all sizes. I cofounded WeDoWebStuff.com (now Website Physician) where we built web applications for medical offices and fertility clinics, various small businesses, a point-of-sale system for Proctor and Gamble, a mortgage processing system used by many large lenders, and over 200 clients overall.
I also worked at a consulting company where I architected the student information system used by 680 public school districts across the state of Ohio. I architected and led development of a healthcare waste management solution and I helped build a popular fantasy football web application used by over 30,000 league members.