Principal Software Engineer SkillSoft PLC

2001-

current 

Lead Architect, SkillSoft LMS Add-on Application Group

• Responsible for overall architectural design of a set of strategic value-add applications for a hosted learning management system, as part of a software development process.

• Contribute directly to projects as a technical team lead, retaining a “hands-on” awareness of system operation, mentoring and leading development teams in realizing designs.

• Drive initiatives to introduce unit testing philosophy, usability studies, code-reuse and software infrastructure enhancements to lower deployment and management cost.

• Technologies include: Java, Tomcat, ColdFusion, JUnit unit testing, Ant, Web Services, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Struts, WebWork, Freemarker, JSP, Object-oriented design, “lower-case” agile development processes.

Senior Software Architect, SkillSoft Solution Services

• Analyzed requirements and produced designs for enhancements to a standard learning management system to support migrating a principal customer from a highly customized platform to the standard platform.

• Led implementation of add-on applications and core product enhancements to meet the customer’s specialized needs, in a manner to be marketable to a wider audience.

• Mentored local development team on adoption of new development methods and skills as a result of merging with an acquiring software engineering group, including transitioning from ASP to Java/JSP based development and agile methods.

• Technologies included: Object-oriented development, Java, Tomcat, Struts, JSP, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Ant, test-first, unit-testing, “lower-case” agile development processes.

Lead architect, SmartForce Global Services Custom Learning Management System

• Principal architect and designer of a highly tailored learning management system for the largest client account of the company.

• Lead a team of 5 designers in analyzing formal requirements, and refactoring a pre-existing learning management framework to meet the requirements.

• Defined and championed a software design and development process for the dedicated software development team.

• Technologies included: Object-oriented design, ASP, IIS, Microsoft SQL Server 2000

Senior Software Architect, SmartForce Global Services

• Principal software designer and architectural consultant for a contracting services group that customized a hosted learning management system for specialized needs.

• Designed software and solution procedures for customer platform customization requests; Interacted with customers to gather and analyze customer requirements and translate them into effective designs.

System Architect, SmartForce Learning Management System

• Member of the software design team for an advanced reporting delivery platform and instructor-led training module development, using the Rational Unified Process.

• Mentored developers in implementation of designed applications on an ASP application.

Senior Software Developer and Co-Founder NVision Software Systems Inc.

1997-2001 

Business Administration 

• Co-founded a startup to develop and market technology for interactive visualization of dynamic relational information using three dimensional graphical techniques.  

• Served on the Board of Directors, helping raise $1.2 million in venture capital, negotiating the acquisition of key intellectual property rights from the University of New Brunswick.

• Attended marketing and trade shows to demonstrate and promote the product.  Participated in on-site customer sales and setup programs.

Senior Software Developer 

• Re-engineered a Silicon Graphics Irix-based visualization application to the Microsoft Windows platform, using C++ and the OpenGL graphics standard. 

• Designed general visual representation and three dimensional layout techniques for relational data. 

• Led a development team on implementation of application functionality. 

• Designed and implemented business domain demonstration applications for marketing and sales, application Installshield installer, and maintained the unit test framework, testbed, and build system.  

• Administered software alpha and beta programs.  

Programmer/Analyst, Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, NB Power Corporation

1992-1994 

Programmer/Analyst, Control Systems Group

• Designed and deployed a toolkit and hardware driver modification for the exchange of code and data between a PC network and the Varian V-70 control computers;  Refactored mission-critical station control management applications from Pascal to Modula-2.

Programmer/Analyst, Data Management Group

• Principal designer and developer of a reusable, object-oriented windowing text editor component in C, for integration into VAX/VMS data management systems.

• Contributed to the design and implementation of a framework for VAX/VMS based station data management systems, and implemented applications using the framework.  

Master of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

Thesis: Visualization of Data Communications in 3D.  

• Graduated with first class honors. 

Thesis Study 

• Led experimental studies regarding the effect of frame rate on a viewer's perception of animated sequences of similar objects.  

• Developed and experimentally tested rendering techniques designed to overcome the effects of temporal aliasing.  

• Implemented and evaluated a 3D representation of a communication link, graphically animating message transmission rate to cover three orders of magnitude.  

• Applied the research results in a 3D visualization of a cellular telephone network for Nortel. 

Individual Study 

• Designed and implemented visual techniques for enhancing HTML pages with animated graphical 'gestures' as overlays.  

• Implemented a web browser enhanced with graphical gesture recording bound to HTML elements, audio recording, and scripted playback capabilities. 

Bachelor of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

Thesis: Formal Description Techniques for Communication Protocol Design and Implementation

• Graduated with first class honors with a specialization in Software Systems.  

• Completed the 'Co-Op' work term education stream, alternating real-world work experience with academic semesters. 

Publications 

• An Environment that Integrates Flying and Fish Tank Metaphors, CHI’97 Demonstration paper, CHI’97 Extended Abstracts, Atlanta, GA, pp 8-9.

• Integrating Flying and Fish Tank Metaphors with Cyclopean Scale, Proceedings of Computer Graphics International, 1997, Hasselt and Diepenbeek, Belgium, pp 39-46.

• Context Sensitive Flight Interface, Proceedings of the 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Providence, RI, pp 127-130.

• Sat on expert’s panel at the National Research Council Workshop on Visualization, in July 1999, Ottawa. Topic of discussion was “Aspects of visualization and its value in real-world applications”.

Certifications 

Microsoft Certified Professional: 

• 70-229 – Designing and Implementing Databases with SQL Server 2000 

• 70-300 – Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures 

• 70-310 – Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft .NET