Steven Atkinson, Ph.D.

Austin, TX · steven.atkinson@gmail.com · constellize.com

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Australia, 1997. Dissertation: Formal Engineering of Software Library Systems.
• Bachelor of Information Technology, First Class Honours, University Medal, The University of Queensland, Australia, 1992.

Teaching Experience

Adjunct Assistant Instructor, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (online Master’s program), January 2017 to January 2026

Taught every Spring, Summer and Fall semester from 2017 through 2025 (27 consecutive semesters).

• Overall teaching effectiveness 5.46 to 5.80 out of 6 across 10 evaluated sections (2023 to 2025), above the department mean in every section; response rates typically above 90%.
• Directed the curriculum and model projects for 14-week web and Android courses built on five layered real-world patterns. Enrollment doubled over five years to more than 100 students per class.
• Ran weekly online Q&A sessions and recorded short instructional videos for each module.

Founder and Instructor, Constellize, July 2025 to present

• Designed and teaches hands-on cohorts for working software engineers on AI-assisted development (two evenings, four hours in total). Course content is continuously improved and delivered by approved expert instructors.
• Publishes the methodology and open-source reference projects, including digin, a CLI with 100% test coverage and an agent skill file.

Course Development

AI Tools for Software Engineering (Virginia Tech, graduate). Designed in 2023 as special topics course CS 5914, then made a permanent course, CS 5740, in 2025.

• Project sequence: reproducible Docker development environment; AI coding assistant (“Ducky”) with code review, debugging and editing; retrieval-augmented generation; LLM-assisted requirements and testing; autonomous agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools; social and ethical impact of AI.
• Built the course infrastructure: a shared LLM proxy (Node.js and Java/Netty prototypes, shipped in async Python) so a class of 100 can use one model and key, a proxy health checker, and AI-assisted discussion grading tools integrated with the Canvas API.

Internet Software (Virginia Tech, graduate). Built the model project and directed curriculum for web and Android versions of the course.

Earlier Academic Appointments

Tutor, Department of Computer Science, The University of Queensland, 1994 to 1997. Tutored formal methods and logic programming; completed the department’s tutor training workshops in 1995 and 1996.

Postdoctoral Researcher, then Research Assistant Professor, Reusable Software Research Group, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, 1997 to 2000. Research on component-based software reasoning and the RESOLVE reasoning tool.

Industry Experience

Netflix, 2007 to 2011 and 2013 to October 2026 (16+ years)

• Senior Software Engineer, Platform and Delivery Engineering (2024 to 2026). Owned Fast Properties, the dynamic-configuration service (200,000+ clients, 50,000+ requests per second). Cut fleet-wide publishing time by 50%; designed a configuration wizard linked to a 20% reduction in incidents; built an incident analyzer over 6,000 incidents; built AI agents and plugins that cut token usage on endurance tasks by 60%; contributed to Netflix’s AI code-review tool.
• Senior Staff Software Engineer, Security and Backend, Netflix DVD (2013 to 2024). Consolidated the website backend by 90% to three cloud servers; saved $500K+ by retiring legacy systems; introduced client-side card encryption across Netflix.
• Senior Software Engineer, E-commerce and Acquisition (2007 to 2011). Led the Netflix Canada website launch, delivered four weeks early; led the first PS3 and CE device acquisition products.

Founding Chief Technology Officer, Lalo, 2021 to 2022. Built the backend for a family-media product; managed nine engineers across mobile, server and AWS.

Principal Software Engineer, Tenefit (Kaazing), 2011 to 2013. HTML5 WebSocket gateway, single sign-on and firewall traversal for major banks; two patents.

Earlier: LinkedIn (employee #8, 2003 to 2005), Entrege, ChartOne, Momsdesk Commerce, 2000 to 2007.

Publications

Software engineering education

1. G. Kulczycki and S. Atkinson. “Industrializing Your Web Application Development Project.” 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, Software Engineering Division, June 2020. doi:10.18260/1-2–34824
2. G. Kulczycki and S. Atkinson. “Why Educators Need to Team with Industry Professionals in Software Development Education.” 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 2018. doi:10.18260/1-2–31243

Doctoral thesis

3. S. R. Atkinson. Formal Engineering of Software Library Systems. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Queensland, 1997. doi:10.14264/02b5c6f

Journal articles

4. P. A. Bailes, S. Atkinson, M. Chapman, D. Johnston and I. Peake. “Towards an Open Software Conversion Architecture.” International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 5(3):423-444, 1995. doi:10.1142/S0218194095000216

Conference papers

5. M. Sitaraman, S. Atkinson, G. Kulczycki, B. W. Weide, T. J. Long, P. Bucci, W. Heym, S. Pike and J. E. Hollingsworth. “Reasoning about Software-Component Behavior.” Software Reuse: Advances in Software Reusability (ICSR-6), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1844, Springer, pp. 266-283, 2000. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-44995-9_16
6. S. Atkinson. “Modelling Formal Integrated Component Retrieval.” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Software Reuse (ICSR-5), Victoria, B.C., IEEE Computer Society, pp. 337-346, June 1998. doi:10.1109/ICSR.1998.685759
7. S. Atkinson. “Cognitive Deficiencies in Software Library Design.” Proceedings of the Joint 4th International Computer Science Conference and 4th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC ’97), Hong Kong, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 354-363, December 1997. doi:10.1109/APSEC.1997.640192
8. S. Atkinson. “A Formal Model for Integrated Retrieval from Software Libraries.” Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS 21), pp. 153-168, 1996.
9. S. Atkinson. “Formalizing the Eiffel Library Standard.” Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS Pacific), 1995.
10. S. Atkinson and R. Duke. “Behavioural Retrieval from Class Libraries.” Proceedings of the 18th Australasian Computer Science Conference (ACSC ’95), Australian Computer Science Communications 17(1):13-20, January 1995.
11. P. A. Bailes, S. Atkinson, M. Chapman, D. Johnston and I. Peake. “Proprietary vs. Open Systems Options in the Construction of Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Environments.” Proceedings of the First Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC ’94), Tokyo, IEEE, pp. 60-69, December 1994.
12. S. Atkinson, P. A. Bailes, M. Chapman, M. Chilvers and I. Peake. “A Re-Engineering Evaluation of Software Refinery: Architecture, Process and Technology.” Proceedings of the Symposium on Assessment of Quality Software Development Tools, IEEE, 1994.

Workshop papers

13. S. Atkinson. “(Unreasonable Software) Reuse is Unreasonable (Software Reuse).” Ninth Annual Workshop on Institutionalizing Software Reuse (WISR 9), Austin, Texas, January 1999.
14. S. Atkinson. “Examining Behavioural Retrieval.” Eighth Annual Workshop on Institutionalizing Software Reuse (WISR 8), Columbus, Ohio, 1997.

Encyclopedia articles

15. S. Atkinson and A. Mili. “Software Libraries.” In J. G. Webster (ed.), Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. doi:10.1002/047134608X.W6943

Technical reports

16. S. Atkinson. “A Unifying Model for Retrieval from Reusable Software Libraries.” Technical Report 95-41, Software Verification Research Centre, The University of Queensland, 1995.

Patents

• Authentication revalidation. US Patent 9,154,485, issued October 6, 2015. Revalidates a persistent WebSocket connection over time without disconnecting it: a control frame type negotiated at connection setup lets the server signal the client, which then revalidates over a separate channel.
• Establishing WebSocket protocol extensions. US Patent 9,037,735, issued May 19, 2015. Extends the WebSocket handshake through a subprotocol so that application code, such as JavaScript clients, can negotiate custom extensions rather than being limited to those the browser supports.

Professional Development

• LinkedIn AI Academy, LinkedIn Learning, 2023
• Kotlin for Android: Best Practices, LinkedIn Learning, 2020

References

Available on request.