I finished my final term at the University of Waterloo in August 2008. While at school, I made an effort to mix academics with practical experience as I find I learn best by applying myself to real-world situations.

Relevant Courses: Human-Computer Interaction (CS489), Information Systems Management (CS490), Software Abstraction and Specification (CS246), Organizational Psychology (PSYCH338), Concurrent and Parallel Programming (CS343), Entrepreneurial Technology and the Emerging Information Economy (MTHEL400)

As a member of a five person team I work to secure and monitor systems on the University network. I take part in a weekly rotation as the security operations centre (SOC) contact on campus. In this role I monitor systems and network behaviour while handling requests from clients and external network providers pertaining to all campus `information security' concerns.

On the security team I am the primary contact for the vulnerability management programme (QualysGuard SaaS solution). Using this tool I am responsible for running regular scans of approximately 13000 hosts on the campus network. My role is to identify high risk devices that contain information classified as `restricted' or `highly restricted' under university policy and to develop a strategy to remediate any vulnerabilities.

As part of the larger University community I am a member of the Security Working Group, the Active Directory Consolidation Team, and the Disaster Recovery Planning Team. In all my roles in the community I remain professional (as an ambassador of the Security team) and try to seek consensus to meet our goals. Throughout my work I make an effort to always focus on the problems and not the people involved.

Responsibilities: security operations centre, vulnerability management, incident response, remediation.

Skills developed: policy compliance, network packet analysis, client support during incident response.

Acquired a virtual private server and configured an environment for developers requiring web services. Configured Apache for multiple virtual hosts. Installed and maintained MySQL and PHP installations for users. Managed domain name registrations and DNS configuration.

Responsibilities: system design, installation, configuration, and maintenance

Skills developed: managing networked systems, Open Source software integration

I entered this position as the only IT support contact for a user community of about 100 users. I had the supervision of the laboratory facilities manager during the first year and a half of my tenure. During this time, I hired a co-op student to perform a work-practice user study of the Institute work environment. This allowed me to document client pain points, author a vision and strategy, and begin implementing it. One of the pillars of this strategy was an agile Web-Oriented Architecture built on Django, PostgreSQL, and Ubuntu KVM virutalization.

During my tenure I was a champion for the conversion of the Institute's primary communications website from handwritten PHP to a comprehensive CMS (Plone). Using Django for agile development needs and Plone for general communication and Information Architecture needs, we have been able to meet a wide variety of communications requirements.

The team grew while I was in this position. At my departure I worked with a tier-one help desk specialist, a part-time developer, and an IT manager to support:

In this environment I was responsible for daily log audits, server security, software update planning, development plans, build deployment, and performance on all customer facing servers.

Responsibilities: security, development project planning, server operations, change management.

Skills developed: managing people, integrating systems and people, identifying and meeting user needs.

Provided instructional support for the CS non-major course, Concepts for Advanced Computer Usage. Working knowledge of various applications was required to help students in the lab. Worked to deploy Apache and Witango (a CGI middleware processor) on all student machines. This deployment was used to teach students about XHTML, CSS, and database backed web applications.

Responsibilities: taught two labs per week, one-on-one and group support in the lab

Skills developed: Microsoft Office, Filemaker, Adobe CS, SQL, XHTML, CSS, and Apache

Provided instructional support for the CS major course, Foundations of Sequential Programs. Worked at improving knowledge transfer among tutors, grad TAs, and professors to facilitate the adoption of new curriculum. Pioneered wiki use and revision control to transfer knowledge to future tutors.

Responsibilities: managing grad TAs, developing and giving tutorials, office hours for students

Skills developed: personnel management, balancing stakeholder needs, public speaking, teaching

Collected, analyzed, and summarized competitive intelligence data on SIP-based VoIP market.

Responsibilities: processing trade and technical publications, presenting findings to senior management

Skills developed: critical thinking, written communication, synthesizing information, summarizing data

Worked with two companies to specify requirements and develop a SIP-based VoIP softphone.

Responsibilities: coordinating development efforts between teams, supporting beta customers

Skills developed: conflict resolution, mediation, customer relations

Developed software for digital video recorders used in security installations. Ported software from Win32 to Linux and developed tools for managing installations on Red Hat based distros.

Responsibilities: development in a proprietary language, packaging software, creating test suites

Skills developed: learning new programming languages, software deployment

Developed tools to manage (and actively managed) a network test bed. Supported developers in their research and development.

Responsibilities: building TCP/IP networks, maintaining documentation, writing administrative tools

Skills developed: problem solving, rapid development, end-user support

Collaborated with various parties to build a 60 seat Linux lab for introductory computer courses. Explored the possibility of introducing Linux throughout the school board. As the only team member with Linux knowledge, I acted as a single point of contact for teachers and students.

Responsibilities: design of lab, installation and maintenance of hardware, training teachers

Skills developed: network administration, end-user support, maintaining mission critical systems

Worked in two different groups at Nortel headquarters developing engineering support software.

Responsibilities: developing applications in C, Perl, Java

Skills developed: self-motivated learning, independent work ethic, personal time management