Software Engineer Years Experience

Resume/CV: Justin Mason

Web: http://jmason.org/ -- Email: abqbou@r.postjobfree.com

OVERVIEW

Senior software engineer with a strong devops skill-set, and experience in

leading the design, development and operation of large-scale software

projects. These range from Apache SpamAssassin, the world-leading

open-source spam filter, to a world-wide network monitoring system

used internally within Amazon.

SKILL DETAILS

Specialities: Linux, open source, anti-spam, mail, internet security, mail filtering, scalability

Programming languages, libraries and frameworks:

Perl, Java, C, C++, Python, sh/sed/awk/etc.

Standards and protocols:

HTTP, SMTP, DNS, TCP/IP, SSL/TLS, POSIX

Internet-oriented software development:

Created Apache SpamAssassin, the market-leading open-source spam filter product, used by an estimated 100 million users world-wide.

Wrote and maintain a wide variety of open source applications and modules -- see "OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE" below.

over 20 years experience working with TCP/IP on various platforms, including HTTP/S and SMTP client and server implementations in a variety of languages.

Systems administration, ops, and infrastructure:

set up the first commercial web server in Ireland, one of the first 100 web servers world-wide.

Many years experience administering a variety of multiuser UNIX systems.

current team designs, builds, and operates a fleet of network monitoring services around the world.

Development methodologies:

experience with XP, Scrum and Kanban methodologies

EXPERIENCE

SDE, Amazon.com (Dublin, Ireland) (Jul 2009 - present):

Developing products and services to perform Amazon-scale active network monitoring. Our team's main project has been a next-generation network monitoring system, to detect and triangulate network problems quickly and accurately in order to drive down MTTD and MTTR. This is composed of a fleet of servers running Jetty and Guice in Java, and a larger fleet of agents written in C++ with Boost.

Software Engineer, NewBay (Dublin, Ireland) (Dec 2008 - Jul 2009):

Working on server farm deployment automation, and large-scale object storage.

Software Engineer, PutPlace (Dublin, Ireland) (Nov 2007 - Dec 2008):

Scaling PutPlace's solutions using Amazon's EC2 and S3 web services; implemented a one-click deployment system to deploy fully production-ready grids of EC2-hosted servers.

VP, Apache SpamAssassin (July 2006 - July 2008), Project Management Committee Member, Apache SpamAssassin Project (July 2004 - present):

Deciding the architecture, development, goals and direction of the open-source Apache SpamAssassin project. see http://spamassassin.apache.org .

Technical Advisory Board Member, MailChannels Corporation (2007 - Jul 2009):

Advising MailChannels on anti-spam issues on an infrequent basis.

Consultant, Vast.com, Inc. (telecommuting) (Feb 2006 - Nov 2007):

Implemented a machine-learning classifier to differentiate between web pages of different vertical markets at high speed, accurately; developed new scaling code for the Vast backend using Amazon's web services (EC2, S3, SQS and SimpleDB).

SSE, McAfee, Inc. (telecommuting) (Dec 2002 - Feb 2006):

Working for McAfee's enterprise anti-spam department, developing the McAfee SpamAssassin SDK, based on the Deersoft SpamAssassin engine with proprietary enhancements, and on backend systems used to generate and publish high-accuracy anti-spam rulesets. This was the anti-spam software used in McAfee's high-end groupware and appliance product line.

Consultant, Deersoft (telecommuting) (Sep 2002 - Dec 2002):

Commercial version of SpamAssassin, providing proprietary features and speed and efficiency increases. My code quintupled the speed of the core SpamAssassin engine, through use of a more efficient parallel string-matching algorithm. Deersoft was acquired by McAfee in Dec 2002.

Maintainer, SpamAssassin (June 2001 - July 2004):

Creator and maintainer of the open-source SpamAssassin spam filter, http://spamassassin.org . I released the first version of SpamAssassin in 2001. See the "OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE" section below for more details.

Head of Software Engineering, Netnote International (Dublin, Ireland) (May 2000 - Sep 2002), Chief Architect, Netnote International (Dublin, Ireland) (Jan 1999 - May 2000):

Design and implementation of the software for the "Webnote", a low-cost

internet appliance; embedded system work using C on QNX.

UI design was a major factor in this work, as it was aimed at first-time computer users.

Later, reoriented the product towards use as a public

internet kiosk; design and implementation of telemetry, metering systems, and kiosk network

management systems. Ported the software from QNX to Linux.

Built up to a 5-person software team.

Senior Software Engineer, Iona Technologies (Dublin, Ireland) (1997 - Jan 1999):

Design and implementation of the "Wonderwall" firewall proxy server for

Iona's product range. This product allowed CORBA invocations across

the internet and through internet firewalls, while allowing firewall

administrators to selectively block or permit access.

It was implemented in C++ on Solaris, Linux and

Windows, incorporated its own CORBA IIOP implementation, HTTP server,

and SSL support. Secure programming techniques were used throughout.

I also designed and implemented HTTP tunnelling and SSL support in OrbixWeb, Iona's

Java implementation of the CORBA standard.

Software Engineer, Iona Technologies (Dublin, Ireland) (1992 - 1993), Systems Administrator, Iona Technologies (Dublin, Ireland) (1993 - 1997):

Joined Iona Technologies as one of their first employees, implementing a

Motif-based GUI for a UNIX printer driver in C on SunOS 4.1.1.

I then became Iona's sysadmin while the company grew from 10 people to over 150; by the latter

stage I was head of a 3-person team. The position

involved looking after the physical network, the UNIX systems and networks,

helpdesk, a multi-site email network with SMTP, backups, user account

synchronisation and availability across the wide range of internal OSes, and running Iona's

main internet servers, net connection and firewall.

OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE

In addition to the commercial software development experience detailed above, I

am the author of a number of free / open-source software projects.

Highlights:

Apache SpamAssassin, a mail filter to detect and block unsolicited bulk

email. Since I created the first version in 2001, it has been a runaway

success. By now it is deployed by thousands of sites protecting somewhere

around 100 million users world-wide, is the #1 open-source spam filter,

winner of several awards including the Anti-Spam category in Datamation's

Product of the Year 2005 and 2006 Awards, an InfoWorld Bossie Award in

2007, and a Linux New Media Award 2006. It is probably the most

widely-used spam filter in the world. More info at

http://spamassassin.apache.org .

PLP (the Public Line Printer system). A drop-in replacement for the UNIX

"lpr" line printer spooler system, with features oriented towards

providing support for networked printers, and improved security. I took

over maintainance of this from its original author, and updated and

supported it for a year and a half; during my stewardship it eventually had

over 10,000 users in over 100 sites, including BASF, the Burlington Coat

Factory, and McMurdo Base, Antarctica. PLP was included in SuSE Linux, among

other Linux distributions, for several years.

AFFILIATIONS

I am a Member of the Apache Software Foundation.

PUBLICATIONS

Justin Mason, New Features in SpamAssassin 3.2.0 Of Interest To Large

Receivers, presentation, MAAWG Dublin 2007:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/PresentationsAndPapers

Henry Stern, Justin Mason, Michael Shepherd, A Linguistics-Based Attack

on Personalised Statistical E-mail Classifiers. Technical report

CS-2004-06, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS,

March 2004. http://www.cs.dal.ca/research/techreports/2004/CS-2004-06.shtml

Justin Mason, Spam Forensics: Reverse-Engineering Spammer Tactics,

presentation, Toorcon 2004:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/PresentationsAndPapers

Justin Mason, Filtering Spam With SpamAssassin, presentation, HEANet

Annual Conference 2002:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/PresentationsAndPapers

Prof. Patrick Powell, Justin Mason, LPRng, An Enhanced Printer Spooler

System. Paper presented at the ninth USENIX Large Installations Systems

Administration (LISA '95) conference.

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/lisa95/papowell.html

INTERESTS AND OTHER PROJECTS

My interests include: SCUBA diving (PADI Advanced Diver certified), reading,

graphic design, copyright law, and open source software.

I write a weblog at http://taint.org/, which won Best Technology Blog

in the 2009 Irish Blog Awards.

EDUCATION

1989 - 1990: BA degree in Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; did

not complete degree.

vanced Diver certified), reading,

graphic design, copyright law, and open source software.

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