Quality Assurance Software Engineer

Erik Max Francis

San Jose, CA, USA

Formats: [*]HTML, [2]text, [3]PostScript, [4]PDF.

EMAIL [5]***-******@*******.***

WEB [6]http://www.alcyone.com/max/

LOCATION San Jose, CA, USA

OBJECTIVE

To obtain gainful employment in a challenging position at a forward-looking

company, utilizing my particular skills and talents under a Unix, Unix-like,

or platform-agnostic environment. Telecommuting preferred.

SKILLS

* Operating systems: Linux, Solaris and other Unix-like operating systems

(System V and BSD); IRIX, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc.

* Programming languages: C++, C, Python, Java, Perl.

* Other languages: ActionScript, APL, BASIC, Emacs Lisp, Io, J, Common

Lisp, Forth, Logo, Haskell, Mathematica, Objective-C, Pascal,

PostScript, Prolog, Scheme, Tcl.

* Tools: Bourne-like shells (sh, bash, zsh) and shell utilities, gcc, gdb,

make, emacs, m4, awk, sed, telnet, ssh, screen, gnuplot, CVS, SVN,

Perforce, Bugzilla, Apache, sendmail, qmail/ezmlm, procmail, BIND,

named, tinydns, X Window System, ctwm, sawfish, PNM.

* Technologies: TCP, UDP, HTML/XHTML, HTTP, SSI, CGI, XML, SVG, RTF, PDF,

SMTP, NNTP, DNS, MD5, SHA, SSL/TLS, CORBA, SQL, OpenGL, Unicode, POSIX

threads, regular expressions, client/server networking, object

orientation, system administration, system security, API design.

* Python technologies: Medusa, PIL, Numeric, PyOpenGL, pygame, docutils,

psyco.

* Advanced concepts: analytic geometry; differential, integral, vector,

and tensor calculus; linear algebra; predicate calculus; physics;

artificial neural networks; cellular automata; Lindenmayer systems;

finite state machines; genetic algorithms and programming; evolutionary

computation; fractals; artificial life.

* Writing: technical documentation, how-to, non-fiction.

WORK EXPERIENCE

CyberArts, Inc. (Oakland, CA) Senior Software Engineer. (2003 )

Architected and implemented a highly-multithreaded poker server as part of a

server suite for a next-generation online gaming platform, CyberArts

Foundation, written in C++ under Linux. Was personally and solely

responsible for all poker game logic and user interface associated with the

poker table, given an extremely thin and portable (Windows, Macintosh,

Flash) client. Engineered the server to be very modular, easily

accommodating the addition of new poker variants, resulting in a poker

gaming platform offering the widest variety available in the market. Also

designed the system to be localizable and completely skinnable from a

data-driven source. Assisted with the design and structure of the XML-based

client-server protocol. Advised on the design of the other server

components, including the CORBA interfaces and SQL schemas needed for the

various interactions between these components and the poker server. Assisted

with the design of a Game Developers Kit, allowing customers to

independently write their own game servers. Assisted with the architecture

of Foundation, the server suite itself. Used Python to write a

high-performance client architecture for testing through the use of bots, as

well as for other ad hoc tools. Helped with user interface design. Delivered

stable software with very long uptimes through the use of unit tests, even

initially with no quality assurance resources. Met the demands for

customization and feature requests for numerous customers with aggressive,

overlapping schedules. Joined the company as employee number 4 under heavy

NDA for the first year as part of a stealth startup. Telecommuted.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (San Jose, CA) Senior Computer Scientist. (2003 2004)

As a part of Adobe's Advanced Technology Group, implemented SVG Renderer, a

portable (Linux, Solaris, Windows) Python application using the SVG core

library, in order to render SVG documents to a variety of image formats

(PNG, GIF, JPEG, etc.) and options. Designed the application to be used as:

a standalone rasterizing utility (requiring no network access); an HTTP

server which, when provided an SVG document via a POST query, would

rasterize the document and respond with the resulting image; as an HTTP

client that would interact with an SVG Renderer server, providing the source

SVG document and locally manipulating the resulting rasterized image; and as

a Python module which provided developer access to any or all of the above

features. Telecommuted.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (San Jose, CA) Computer Scientist. (2000 2001)

Ported the Adobe Scalable Vector Graphics core engine written in C++ to

Linux and Solaris (from Windows and Macintosh), making possible the SVG

Linux viewer for Mozilla. Implemented and maintained company-wide, portable

(Linux, Solaris, Windows, Macintosh) API for SVG rendering and importing,

utilized by many Adobe applications, including SVG Viewer, Illustrator,

Photoshop, and Adobe Graphics Server/AlterCast. Interfaced with these other

teams as clients to provide them the APIs and functionality that they

needed. Provided technical advice and support for clients of those APIs on

Macintosh, Windows, and Solaris. Ported an automated build validation tool

written in Python to Linux and Solaris, which ran against every change

entered into source control. Wrote an automated system in Python which would

render a suite of test files, and either interactively display differences

from the blessed testcases through a simple GUI for human interaction.

Delivered a high-quality product with no dedicated quality assurance

department allocated to the project. Provided expertise in C and C++

Standards conformance and portability. Partially telecommuted.

Infoseek, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) Consultant. (1999)

Designed and implemented a log tracking daemon for Linux and Solaris in C++,

which monitored a complex mail log in realtime (with very high traffic) and

streamed out a condensed log of key events in a unified, company-wide

format; said daemon responded to Unix signals for various changes in

behavior, including the creation of an on-demand HTML report.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (San Jose, CA) Computer Scientist. (1996 1998)

Developed and maintained plugins and internal functionality for Illustrator

7.0 and 8.0 (Windows and Macintosh) in C and C++. Responsibilities included

general rasterizing and functionality libraries, raster file formats (most

prominently GIF and JPEG), Web features (including hyperlinks and

imagemaps), Smart Guides, and transformation and shape tools.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) Computer Scientist. (1995 1996)

Quickly and simultaneously learned the Illustrator 5.5 and 6.0 (Macintosh)

plugin API, the latter of which was under heavy development at the time.

Worked with a small team to obtain basic testing of the entire API of over

500 calls, as well as depth and applied testing over the most important

calls, including several complete plugin features. Also developed a rapid

prototype in Java for a research project which converted Illustrator

documents to class files runnable as browser applets.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) Member of Technical Staff.

(1993 1995)

Designed, implemented, and organized automation testing frameworks in QA

Partner 1.2 and 2.1 for Illustrator 5.5 and 6.0 (Macintosh), Adobe Type

Manager 3.7 and 3.8 (Macintosh), and Type on Call 4.0 (Windows and

Macintosh), along with a suite of testcases using this framework to validate

each build. Eventually led team of two additional testers to maintain, use,

and extend this framework. Also created new testing tools, including an

output-based print validation system for PostScript Level 2 devices.

Sameena, Inc. (Milpitas, CA) Member of Technical Staff. (1992)

Designed and implemented a sales-oriented customer tracking database system

in C under SunOS 4.1, using curses as a terminal interface. Trained staff on

the use of this database.

RELEVANT ACTIVITIES

* Open source contributor, including numerous Python modules and

applications available at [7]http://www.alcyone.com/, including: a

cellular automata library, a lambda calculus explorer, an identd

security system, a customizable unique ID generator, a URL validation

system, an OpenGL-based 3D graphics engine for rapid visualization, and

[8]EmPy, a powerful templating system which is steadily gaining in

popularity. (2001 )

* Freelance technical writer; wrote two articles for [9]Linux Journal.

Three more commissioned articles pending. (1999 )

* Contributor to The Hanford Consortium, a volunteer bandwidth cooperative

of system administrators and software engineers who support a base of

300 users and 500 domains on eight Solaris, Linux, IRIX, OpenBSD, and

NetBSD servers. (2001 )

* Webmaster of a dozen domains which altogether receive about 10 000

unique visitors per day. (1995 )

EDUCATION

* Attended De Anza College (Cupertino, CA), with particular emphasis on

computer science courses.

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