Jay Sweeney, Résumé

Email

writetojay [-:at:-] gmail.com

Objective

I seek to work with new technologies. On creative, and interesting projects, and to work with, and contribute to, a team of like-minded individuals. I have a natural curiosity for new technologies and I'm constantly looking for ways to improve my knowledge and skills.

Summary

• Experience as a developer/programmer/analyst on many commercial software projects over the past 10 years.
• Senior Software Developer (2011 - Present), wotif.com
• Senior Software Engineer (2006 - 2011), Creatop — A software company specialising in business applications for the transport industry; Building development industry; Large-scale Community Portals; Intranet applications, and web-site development.
• I hold two Bachelors Degrees, and two postgraduate honours degrees — Bachelor Information Technology, Hons (Bioinformatics); Bachelor of Science, Hons (Biochemistry).
• I have proficiency, and commercial experience with —
  • Programming Languages: Java, Groovy, Python, Javascript
  • Java Enterprise Edition server-side frameworks (JPA, JTA, EJB 3.0, Glassfish, Hibernate [search, validator, EM, envers], Lucene, Spring)
  • Web application development frameworks
    (Full-stack, micro, and restful web services): Drop Wizard, Grails, Flask, Django, Twisted Python (and others...)
  • Web client-side technologies - standards compliant HTML and CSS. Client-side javascript: AngularJS, JQuery, Dojo.
  • Experience working with agile development methodologies, Scrum and XP.
  • CI with Jenkins & Team City. Test driven development (JUnit, EasyMock, nose, py.test) BDD (Cucumber-JVM). Configuration management (Puppet); deployment-automation (Fabric).
  • Database design, implementation, maintenance, query-optimisation. (MYSQL, PostGreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle). Search (Elastic Seach); document-based storage (CouchDB).
  • Custom TCP/IP socket server development with the Twisted Matrix Framework
  • Linux system administration and web hosting support — installation, configuration, troubleshooting and maintenance for FTP, POP-Mail (courier MTA), DNS (BIND), Apache, Glassfish, and various DBMS's. F5 load balancers. (and more...)
  • Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and JFace, java desktop-client GUI design and development.
  • Requirements analysis, software specification and software design skills.
  • Open source project: ipydb - a cross-database interactive shell, embedded in IPython

Education

• 2000-2005
  • Bachelor of Information Technology (Hons. Bioinformatics) University of Queensland, Australia.
  • Honours project: Machine learning techniques for the localisation of proteins. (Supervisor: Dr. Mikael Bodén).
• 1994-1999
  • Bachelor of Science (Hons. Biochemistry). University of Queensland, Australia.
  • Honours project: Discovery and analysis of genes involved in mammalian sex determination and sex reversal. (at the Koopman laboratory)

Key Professional Experience

Software Engineer, (2015 - present) — Amazon

Roles/Responsibilities

• The design and implementation of big-data analytics, machine-learning and data science software projects in the online advertising space

Key Technologies and Methodologies

• Machine-learning / optimization algorithms applied to large-scale advertising data-sets
• Design and implementation of restful microservices
• Large-scale elasticsearch analytics
• EMR, hadoop, spark
• AWS technology stack (dynamo, s3, sqs/sns, redshift, ...)
• Java, Spring
• Agile methodologies, software project design, estimation and planning

Senior Software Developer, Wotif group (2011 - 2014) — www.wotif.com

Wotif Group operates leading online travel brands in the Asia Pacific region. Wotif was a publicly listed company (WTF) employing more than 450 staff in 13 countries on five continents. Recently, Wotif Group was acquired by Expedia, Inc.

Roles/Responsibilities

• Requirements gathering and analysis.
• Specification and software design/planning.
• Implementing software which is of a high quality, satisfies functional requirements, and is completed on a tight timeline.
• Quality Assurance. Checking and reviewing other team-members' source code and work process. Improving code quality and practices. Trouble-shooting and training for other team members.

Key Technologies and Methodologies

• Agile Development - Scrum & XP
• Test Driven Development - JUnit, EasyMock
• BDD - Cucumber-JVM
• CI - Jenkins, TeamCity
• Configuration Management, Deployment, Packaging: Puppet, Fabric, Maven, RPM
• RESTful webservices (DropWizard)
• Elastic Search, CouchDB, Oracle Database
• Java EE, Spring, Hibernate, Lucene, WebWork, JMS, REST, Jersey

Software Applicatons Manager, Creatop (2009 - 2010);
Senior Software Engineer, Creatop (2006 - 2009).

Creatop is an active small-to-medium sized software firm offering a range of products and services from large-scale, complicated business applications down to website design and hosting. In this role I have gained experience working in a small team of software developers of various experience levels to achieve outcomes on tight timelines. I was involved in all aspects of the software development lifecycle: initial client meetings and requirements gathering; software specification and design; implementation and deployment; and, quality assurance and software maintenance. In 2009, I was promoted to the position of Software Applications Manager. In this new role I was entrusted with team leadership responsibilities, while also making decisions about the technology and software development upon which Creatop built its business.

Roles/Responsibilities

• Requirements gathering and analysis.
• Specification and software design/planning.
• Implementing software which is of a high quality, satisfies functional requirements, and is completed on a tight timeline.
• Quality Assurance, Training. Checking and reviewing other team-members' source code and work process. Improving code quality and practices. Trouble-shooting and training for other team members.
• Improving internal software development process.
• Supporting existing web hosting clients and installing new hosting environments. On top of ongoing software development projects, Creatop runs a self-managed server hosting facility for numerous clients and on a wide range of different platforms.

Key Technologies

• Server-side programming: Java EE 5 Application development stack, Coldfusion, PHP.
• Client side programming: Desktop-GUI development: SWT/JFace. Web clients: standards compliant HTML/DHTML/CSS. AJAX/XML-RPC Javascript; Dojo/Dijit JavaScript GUI toolkits; Flash, Actionscript programming.
• Database design, optimisation, and maintenance (MSSQL, MySql, PostgreSql).
• Object-Oriented, UML-based Software design.
• Hosting support and setup: Strong skills in general Linux/Unix server administration. Applications support for: Apache, Mysql, PostreSQL, FTP, SMTP, POP-mail, DNS. Experience with windows server support: IIS, MS-SQL.

Consultant Software Engineer, Flexicar (2005-present)

Flexicar is an innovative, high-tech car sharing concept. Flexicar members can book a car over the web, locate a car, and using their SmartCard, swipe-in, unlock the car, take a journey, and swipe-out afterwards. All without the requirement for human staff-interaction. Booking, billing, and car locking/unlocking is fully automated via Internet applications. Flexicar Support staff can GPS-track and control many aspects of their flexi-cars via specialised internet applications.

Role/Responsibilities

• Flexicar smart-cars are equipped with an internet-connected device which provides a two-way interface for communications. I was contracted as an independent software consultant by Flexicar to develop a custom Internet server application for coordinating and controlling a fleet of share-cars, together with an administration application for Flexicar staff to remotely monitor, GPS-locate, and interact with their fleet.

Key Technologies

• Custom TCP/IP Server developed from the ground-up using Python and the Twisted Framework. This Server coordinates embedded GPRS mobile-network connected devices installed in share-cars via a custom protocol.
• Python Nevow, web development kit. Administration and fleet-management tools were developed for the Custom python TCP/IP Server. GPS tracking and unit manipulation is achieved via a http-based 'snap-in' admin tool for the main TCP/IP socket server.
• PHP/MYSQL based car-booking and member-management system.

Lead Developer, QUT + Kids Help Line (2005)

This project was a partnership between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Kids Help Line (KHL), to develop interactive, web-based counselling tools to complement KHL’s existing online services and other counselling activities.

Role/Responsibilities

As the lead developer on the project, I was responsible for IT planning, technology selection, system architecture, implementation and support of the web counselling software suite.

Key Technologies

• A custom Python-based TCP/IP server for Internet communications - built with the Twisted Matrix framework.
• An XML-based language for communicating and synchronising the flash-based counselling client-side interfaces.
• A Client side suite utilizing Flash/Actionscript and javascript to create a rich, expressive interface which took the form of a whiteboard with sophisticated drawing and chatting tools.
• Database backend system for queuing and entry into the counselling sessions, together with the management and administration of counselling sessions, users, and transcripts.

Referees

Dave Whitla, Technical Architect, Wotif Group

Email

dave D-O-T whitla A-T wotifgroup D-O-T com

Marcos Caceres, Platform Architect, The Mozilla Corporation.

Email

mcaceres@mozilla.com

Further Commercial Referees are available upon your request.