Steve Rude

Starting his own web development business at 16 years of age, Steve has spent the last 10 years building the networking backbone of the US information technology economy. In 1999, Steve joined ICG Communications as a Network Administrator and was promoted to Network Engineer in less than six months. Working as a key player in the 24/7 Network Operations Center, Steve was responsible for over 1200 Cisco routers and switches, deploying both 802.11 wireless and VOIP network infrastructure, and Tier 3 support for T1 pipelines for all ICG customers, including MSN, Mindspring, and Netzero.

Eager for new challenges and fresh learning opportunities, Steve has been a Senior Operations Engineer for AlterEgo Networks, Inc. where he managed eight independent network centers running FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris servers; a Network Engineer for Navisite, Inc. where he created a mission-critical QA application for the deployment of resources for clients Altavista, Ancestry.com, and CollegeClub.com; and a Senior Network Engineer for Skyriver Communications, Inc., where he was instrumental in building out this San Diego-based Wireless ISP into Los Angeles and Riverside counties, creating the largest wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) in California.

Leveraging his expertise, Steve continued to enhance his talents and knowledge by serving as a Senior Engineer for Wireless Facilities, Inc. and IP3 Networks, continuing his approach of applying creative solutions to increasingly demanding and sophisticated network issues. As a Senior Consultant to Core Internet Services, Steve designed and deployed a two-tier, fault-tolerant network using open-source servers for Apartments24-7 and developed custom QA and load-handling software utilized by Netlogix and Cox Communications.

As a Lead Developer for Achieve Internet, Steve not only brings his far-reaching experience and talents to the table, but has come full circle back to web development, contributing core patches to drupal.org, tuning memcache and a few other caching modules for scaling large Drupal installations, and applying his expertise in both software and hardware architecture to the benefit of Achieve’s clients and the community at large.