Job Target

Senior DevOps Engineer

Strengths

  • Quick to learn and adapt
  • Thrives on technical challenges
  • Technical leadership
  • Troubleshooting and problem analysis
  • Self motivated

Key Skills

  • Over 15 years of Senior Software Engineering experience
  • Team Leadership
  • Technical Project Lead / Design Authority
  • Technical Consultant
  • Azure DevOps / ALM
  • CI / CD with ALM / Hudson / Jenkins / Circle CI / BuddyBuild / TeamCity / Octopus Deploy
  • Agile & Lean methods: Scrum, Test/Behavior-Driven Development
  • Infrastructure as Code (ARM Templates / Docker)
  • Over 15 years JavaScript, C & C++ experience
  • Platforms: Linux, Windows, HP-UX, iOS and OpenVMS.
  • Configuration Control: git, tfs, Clearcase, svn, rcs, sccs
  • Significant C-like language experience (C#, Swift)
  • Scripting via Powershell, Bash & Golang / DSC
  • Real Time OS design and usage / UML
  • 24 x 7 Technical Mission Critical Solution Support (2nd and 3rd line)
  • Database SQL (Azure / MS / Ingres / Postgres / SQLite)
  • Database NoSQL (MongoDB [Document], Azure Table Storage (KV))
  • Distributed SQL and data distribution
  • Serverless Programming (Azure Functions & AWS Lambda) in Node.JS / C#
  • Message queuing technology: MQSeries [WebSphere MQ], DEC Message Q, Custom Store and Forward servers)
  • Network stacks at all levels
  • 15 years Ada in both real-time and commercial environments

Summary

Rik is an extremely able, adaptable, enthusiastic, technical IT professional. He has significant experience encompassing all aspects of the software development lifecycle, working in highly pressurised environments and a track record of delivering results. He provides technical leadership and mentoring to three teams of software developers for an advanced airborne mission planning project.

His recent roles has been the introduction of DevOps and Agile development techniques and Scrum.

Over the years, Rik has worked to provide end-to-end solutions for wide a range of applications in the Banking, Telecommunications, Defence, and Commercial sectors.

Given my vast depth and range of technical experience I’m able to adapt to many differing scenarios.

Career

February 2010 – December 2014 - Hewlett Packard - Scrum Master / Technical Team Lead

As an Agile Scrum Master I facilitate sprint cycles for highly cohesive development teams.

  • Facilitating resolution of cross-departmental issues between development teams applying SCRUM methodology
  • Developing software for an Advance Mission Planning Aid system (C, C++, Python, Linux).
  • Adopting Agile development techniques.
  • Adopting Test Driven Development.
  • Running Scrums; Design meetings; Sprint meetings.
  • Writing Integration Test documentation.
  • Writing Review documentation for design, code and tests.
  • Identifying Code Coverage (Bullseye, Coverity, Figleaf).
  • Continuous Process Improvement

Working as part of a team to develop C/C++ software for an Advance Mission Planning Aid system.

Technical Team Lead to Common TAF team consisting of PM, Project Technical Lead (Governance) PLT, Team Leader (self) and 6 developers. Provided technical support and leadership for managing all aspects of iteration development cycles, coordinating delivery of solutions to meet project milestones.

Working closely with PM & PTL on planning and delivery of releases. Providing technical assessments on requirements, 3-point estimation and resourcing needs to meet delivery milestones. Responsible for technical reviews and milestones from initial requirements, system specification, design, coding and development testing to System test plans and procedures, installation documentation, Quality, safety and airworthiness reviews to release gate reviews for test readiness formal release.

Providing customer support and delivery of technical solutions on complex issues. If needed provide technical customer site support. Engage with the technical community to refine and improve development process for delivering solution of high quality standards. Utilising Enterprise Architecture (EA),Rational Rose as design modelling tools. Deplying Coverity and Bullseye to improve code quality and coverage. Introducing automated unit and Integration testing toolsets such as Google Mock / Google Test.

March 2009 – February 2010 - Lockheed Martin - Senior Software Engineer

NATS: Air Traffic Control Systems

Co-lead a technical team to successfully reverse engineer and modify 250,000 lines of code. This substantial code change we necessary to demonstrate the feasibility of changing the primary air traffic interface into the UK air space.

This interface change involved major changes throughout the system, which were written in a combination of Ada, C & C++ running on a network of IBM AIX (Unix) systems.

Rik has established the use of local change management systems based on Subversion.

Additionally Rik also heads up the Local Configuration Management (LCM) team and liaised with three external parties to create an overall CM policy.

The project pioneered the use of Scrum techniques within Lockheed Martin UK.

Rik provides technical leadership and mentoring in Ada C, C++ and general software design to more junior members of the team.

Contract Employment
Rik has over 15 years continuous contracting experience for a single client (Hewlett Packard). During this time, Rik undertook a variety of roles showing that he is quickly able to adapt and learn new skills. These roles ranged from Software Engineering using Ada, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, Service Design & Support, Technical Project Lead, Team Leadership and Solution Design / Architecture.

Sept 2007 – Sept 2008 - Virgin Media - Business Analyst

Rik was a key member of the team where he provided technical skills which enabled the successful migration of 100,000+ customers and £20m+ worth of accounts between disparate business systems and networks within Virgin Media. This was a key technical liaison role between the different stake holders, business, application and network teams. This required Rik to quickly adapt and learn the various technologies and systems to be able to provide appropriate recommendations.

July 2006 – Aug 2007 - BT Global - Design Authority

Rik led a team responsible for the successful seamless migration of > 1000 ICM / BT Horizon scripts to an Avaya IP Contact Centre solution.

This role also required Rik to be involved in innovative script design, Disaster Recovery: Planning and Implementation, also static & dynamic scripting

April 2006 – July 2006 - SkyNet Systems - Deployment Engineer

Responsible for the deployment of a number of Cisco CallManager, Unity and CallManager Express IPT solutions throughout the UK. This involved the physical installation of the Cisco hardware, through to its commissioning and acceptance. The role involved all aspects of CallManger deployment from phone roll out, call plan design to SRST switch configuration for site fallback.

January 2006 – March 2006 - Cable & Wireless (Via JamIP) - Support Specialist

Member of the JamIP support team that was seconded into C&W.
 
The team provided advanced 2nd and 3rd line support to C&W's extensive ICM & IPCC customer base.
Rik was taken into this role for his technical skills and problem solving ability and was made responsible for resolving long-term, non-trivial, support calls which would frequently involve in depth interaction with the Cisco TAC team and the development of analysis tools to prove support solution hypothesis.

1990 – 2005 - Hewlett-Packard, Reading - Technical Team Leader / Software Engineer / Systems Programmer

Hewlett-Packard, Reading
(2001 – 2003 Formerly Compaq)
(1990 – 2001 Formerly Digital Equipment)
 
Cisco CEM / ICM / IPCC Experience
 
Key member of the HP team responsible for the design, deployment & support of the BT ‘Cambridge / Horizon’ NIP (Network Intelligent Platform) CPR1 & CPR2 overlay networks.
 
BT Cambridge CPR2 [NIP / VIP]
 
CPR2 is a network based non-geographic routing system for the BT Overlay Network. It consisted of a highly resilient 3 site Unix server farm (DEC Unix and DECss7) which could seamlessly provide number translation services based on such criteria as:
 
Network IVR responses
Best fit overlay maps
TV Regions
Time of day
Predicted / historic Call Centre Utilisation
 
Routing was controlled by a online “maptool” and no Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) was necessary.
 
BT Cambridge CPR1 [Intelligent Call Router]
 
CPR1 was the first deployment of a Cisco (née GeoTel) ICM NAM system in the UK. The main system consisted of 2 Windows NT server farms. Each customer site / call centre also required the deployment of CPE to either monitor the state of their call centre or allows routing scripts to be written.
 
As the Support Solution Architect I has overall responsibility for the designed of the overall system monitoring tools and ensured a smooth transition from deployment into joint BT / HP support.
 
Support Solution Architect / Team Leader - eCRM ICM / IPCC support team. This role involved:
24 x 7 2nd and 3rd line on call support for key business critical systems running Cisco ICM, IPCC and CallManager.
Analysis, provision & management of new installations & upgrades to eCRM solutions based on the Cisco product set.
Integration & ongoing support all numerous products from web convergence to CTI solutions (CAD, IPCC, Siebel).
This role involves every aspect of telephony & is based on the integration, installation and high level support of all telephony technologies.
Upgrade Planning for ICR & NAM from V3, V4 & V5 (V7 in progress)
Recruited and trained the HP 2nd and 3rd line support team.
 
Support Technical Team Leader within HP for the Cisco ICM Product Set.
 
Other ICM Related Activities
CERT virus analysis for applicability to deployed systems.
Design of prototype KPI monitor for ICM Systems.
Design & implement security program for CPE based AWS.
Design of generic ‘PG-Rack’ and its deployment at various key customer sites.
Nationwide IPCC deployment and acceptance.
CPE Deployments at various customer sites.
IPCC Deployments at various customer sites.
Configuration Management.
 Design & construction of a semi-automated configuration management system.
 This system is able to track the on going changes to an ever expanding customer base of deployed systems across multiple sites of multiple Telco & Contact Centre NAM/ICM & IPCC systems - including CPE deployments.
Project managed a particularly challenging customer through support handover into acceptance. This Cisco based solution also required Rik to ‘get his hands dirty’ with the installation & configuration of a ICM / IPCC installation and ensure that the delivered solution met the customers needs for usability & security whilst still being supportable by HP & Cisco.
Technical Escalation – Successfully delivered a 24x7 technical escalation capability to counterpoint the HP management escalation structure for all supported Telco customers within HP C&I UK. This involved reporting at the highest level into both HP & our customers as well as being available 24x7x365 for customer escalations.
 
IBOS Inter Bank Online System [Real-Time TP Monitor]
 
Rik provided system design, consultancy, development team leadership and technical support to the IBOS (Inter-Bank On-Line System) Management Company. IBOS provides a round the clock, real-time, international, inter-bank transaction service. IBOS is implemented in Ada, ‘C++’, 'C' and COBOL layered on top of a number of key products; including Rdb, DECforms, DNS, DECbank and Pathworks. Key areas of responsibility:
 
·       Designed and implemented the IBOS Message Handler (IMH) server. This server provided the message routing, compression, verification and transformations necessary for such an inter-bank computer link. The IMH TP Monitor was written in Ada and made full use of the languages tasking facilities and robustness in order to provide the availability and message throughput required in such a business critical application.
·       Designed and implemented a messaging bus (IMR) to provide a reliable real-time transport for messages within the IBOS system
·       Designed the Security Server (SSE) for IBOS. A C++ customised encryption device is employed by the SSE to provide RCA and DES key encryption. The server had to communicate with multiple encryption devices whilst ensuring that the RCA and DES keys were never available ``in clear''. Particular care had to be employed in the design of this server due to the security issues involved.
·       Advised on an appropriate architecture for the IBOS DNS namespace.
·       Providing training to the IBOS Management Companies first line support staff.

 
Other roles at HP:
 
·       Team leader and technical consultant for the porting of over 250,000 lines of C & C++ code from OpenVMS/VAX to OpenVMS/Alpha.
·       Technical consultant for the porting of the UBS front office development system from OpenVMS to Windows NT.
·       Support Consultant for a UNIX based Video-on-Demand system.
·       Vodafone IN7 Support (OpenVMS)
·       BBC PICS Transmission Scheduling System [C++]
·       CellNet [Now O2] ABSlink
·       Technical feasibility study for the replacement of a nuclear power station's control system.
·       Technical support for an IBM-CICS/VAX communications system used by a Stock Exchange trading application.
·       Team leader, software support and migration planning for a client-server Program-Scheduling system for the BBC (PICS).
·       Writing and supporting various Delphi & Visual Basic Front-end applications.

1989 – 1990 - Thorn EMI Electronics Ltd - Systems Programmer

Rik was responsible for the design and implementation the real-time operational flight control software for a gimbal servo control system.
 
Rik was also solely responsible for the reconfiguration the XD Ada runtime system to operate on custom built hardware.
 
As part of the role Rik also provided OpenVMS internals consultancy

1986 - 1989 - SD-Scicon plc. (Camberley) - Systems Programmer

Education

References

Available On Request.