IT savvy and Unix-literate manager happily employed in London's finance industry.

Key skills

Work experience

2005 to present: RGM Advisors UK Limited, London, England
General Manager, London, and electronic trading systems specialist

• Set up the group's electronic trading infrastructure in the UK.
• Jointly maintain relationships with the group's Europe-based trading partners including brokers, trading counterparties, exchanges and other trading venues.
• In role of trading systems specialist, jointly monitor, control, and risk-manage the group's electronic trading systems in Europe, and globally during UK trading hours.
• Jointly supervise UK based staff responsible for support of our trading systems and IT infrastructure in Europe.

2003 to 2005: Voca (formerly BACS), London, England
Senior applications support analyst

• Implemented a customer reports function for NewBACS based on the Oracle 9iAS Report Services servlet. Wrote a SAX 2.0 based XML handler to process results from the servlet.
• Joined the small crack team that completed and deployed the new automated system for transferring Direct Debits and Standing Orders in the UK (ToDDaSO 4). The team was set up in response to a disclosure from the system integrator we were working with at the time that they were likely to miss a deadline to start the new service by six months. We completed the application in eight weeks, thus allowing BACS's member banks to meet their regulatory obligations. This system has been in successful live operation since autumn 2004.
• Served two months in India as an expert in the NewBACS application while transferring knowledge about the product to Voca's new development partner in Noida, near Delhi.

2001 to 2003: Palmerwheeler, London, England
Director of Development and software developer

Palmerwheeler's Develocity ^TM is a high productivity toolset for authoring and delivering internationalized applications for the media and banking markets.

• With one other, created the toolset using J2EE technologies, XML, and XSL Translations.
• Created an internationalized 3-tier application for a global media customer, hosted on Windows servers with a Sybase back-end and a web front-end, used by 1000 users in five languages.
• Implemented software engineering processes which enabled quick and repeatable application deployment, and helped to get us back on track quickly after unforeseen interruptions.

1993 to 2000: Activerse (originally Active Paper), Austin, TX, United States
Co-founder and software developer

Activerse created award-winning applications such as Ding!, an early entrant in the "Instant Messaging" product category, and the Presto! Internet clients for Sony MagicLink devices, including the first handheld consumer web browser.

• With two co-founders, built an organisation of 30 full-time staff. Sold the handheld product line in 1996. Sold the company to CMGI in 1999, generating a large return to investors.
• Desktop messaging software (Java, Windows)
• Managed the on-time release of the Ding! Switchboard server software.
• Led a 3-man project to adapt Ding! technology for an urgently-needed notification feature which was deployed to a top Internet portal 10 weeks after work began.
• Handheld software (C, Macintosh)
• With one other, authored the Presto!Mail POP e-mail client and the Presto!Links web browser, which together earned several million dollars for the company.
• Developed and sold communicating software for Apple's Newton handheld computer.
• Moved development processes to the company Intranet— a novel idea in 1996.

1991 to 1993: Evolutionary Technologies (ETI), Austin, TX
Software developer

ETI's product, Extract, is a suite of Unix tools for automating data conversion between any different data access and storage systems, including relational databases.

• One of four C programmers on the startup team that created Extract for Solaris, HP-UX and AIX platforms.
• Improved the speed of Extract's "grammar compiler" tool 40-fold; ported it from Lisp to C.
• Led a four-person consulting team performing data conversion at a customer site in France.
• Taught the revenue-generating Extract training course; wrote training materials.

1989 to 1990: Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, TX
Member of scientific staff,   Knowledge-Based Natural Language project

Member of a team developing a language understanding system using object-oriented Lisp (CLOS).

1983 to 1986 (24 months full-time work): various companies, Canada
Co-op student programmer

Implemented communications protocols for several telecoms companies including Bell Canada. Wrote new features for Watcom Systems Inc.'s ground-breaking compilers and interpreters.

Volunteer experience

Co-ordinated coaching and domestic and international racing as captain of Orion Rowing Club in London and as a director of Austin Rowing Club in Texas.

Education

• University of Toronto: Master of Science, Computer Science, 1989
• University of Waterloo: Bachelor of Mathematics, Computer Science, Dean's Honour List, 1987
• Sun Microsystems: Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, September 2005
• Sun Microsystems: Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, April 2005
• Canadian Securities Institute: Canadian Securities Course, First Class Honours, 1989
• USRowing: Level 1 Coaching Certificate, 1999
• Native speaker of English, fluent French, basic Spanish. Limited classroom tuition in Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese.

Legal status

Eligible to work for any employer in the UK, Canada, and the USA

Last updated: 2008-09-16