======================================================================== DAVID HARRIS 608-2960 Don Mills Road West Toronto, Ontario M2J 3B8 +1 416 558 0408 dbharris@circainformation.com ======================================================================== EXECUTIVE PROFILE An engaging and highly knowledgeable I.T. generalist with close to 10 years professional experience, David Harris marries his potent work ethic, his considerable and far-reaching technical expertise, and his managerial acumen to provide maximum value to the customers he serves. Proven ability and a results-oriented approach to problem-solving and solution delivery have led to a track record of the effective management and successful completion of multiple concurrent assignments on time and on budget. ======================================================================== PLATFORM EXPERIENCE * UNIX (Solaris 2.6 through 9, HP-UX 10 and 11, AIX 5L, Linux 1.0.1 through 2.6.21, FreeBSD and OpenBSD) * Microsoft Windows (98 through 2003 Server and Vista Ultimate Edition) ======================================================================== SKILL SETS * Experience in a broad range of PC, server, and networking hardware and software * Rollout and maintenance of commercial/corporate firewalls (Linux, Nortel, Cisco, Juniper) * Skilled with hundreds of UNIX daemons, applications, utilities, and resources * Proficient in Shell (Bourne), Python, PERL, and SQL; familiar with C, C++, and Java * Hands-on experience with, and understanding of, a wide range of network protocols (including SMTP, IMAP, FTP, HTTP, XMLRPC, DNS, LDAP, DHCP, etc.) * Experience in working with and transforming a number of open and proprietary file formats (Microsoft Office, PDF, PostScript, OpenDocument, HTML, Flash, etc.) * Familiarity with a number of Configuration Management/Change Management software suites (such as HP OpenView, viaTIL, HEAT, and Remedy) * A first-class ability to communicate with, mentor, and support end-users, all levels of management, and technical personnel * Proven contract negotiation and vendor/customer relationship * management skills ======================================================================== PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Information Technology Department (February 2005 - Current, full time) Company Confidential (Toronto, Ontario) Working for a pre-revenue technology startup focused on financial industry software and the services surrounding it, I was the sole I.T. professional. Thanks to my hard work and broad skill set, I became colloquially known as "the I.T. department." With 30 full-time employees, end-user support was not a burdensome part of my job, but rather something I enjoyed. Maintaining the company's extensive I.T. infrastructure alone (including 60 unique non-clustered servers across eight networks and three geographical locations) proved a rewarding challenge. During my tenure, I was responsible for all aspects of I.T., and served as a consultant to all other parts of the business on any number of technical topics. Specific highlights include responsibility for all non-development technical and engineering tasks, all I.T. design, QA, and testing, support, policy, documentation, sales/marketing materiel and support, budgeting, procurement, and supplier relationships. A partial list of accomplishments relating to this position is available at the end of this document. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lead Author (June 2004 - November 2004, contract) John Wiley and Sons (Hoboken, New Jersey) In May 2004, I was contacted by a recruiting agency looking for a well-spoken and well-known Debian Developer to write the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible (ISBN 0-7645-7644-5), published by John Wiley and Sons. As the lead author, I was responsible for the manuscript proposal presented to Wiley. Having made a business case, I proceeded to write the bulk of the material which appeared in the published copy. The book is currently on shelves and available from prominent retailers such as Chapters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UNIX Operations Lead (January 2004 - August 2004, contract) Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (New York, New York) As a founding member and the UNIX Operations Lead and the Infrastructure Manager of the OFTC communications service provider, I was fully responsible for all of OFTC's 63 worldwide servers, managing and mentoring a staff of three technicians. I created and maintained a complete reproduction virtual environment of OFTC's network and applications for QA, testing, release management, and operational support. I acted as release manager, test suite maintainer, disaster recovery manager, and change manager. I implemented ITIL-compliant source management techniques, and subsequently maintained OFTC's source management, issue tracking, configuration management, network management, and platform applications. One notable project among many included transitioning OFTC's user authentication mechanism from a flat file to a fully-distributed Active Directory-compatible LDAP database. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UNIX Systems Analyst/Integrator (January 2004 - August 2004, contract) Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (New York, New York) As one of the many systems analysts and integrators involved in the Debian Project, my role was primarily technical with some limited managerial aspects. Working within a relatively large, distributed project presented several unique and challenging opportunities. While in such a large project any single individual's role will necessarily be of limited scope, I found that the exceedingly complex inter-dependencies (both within the software as well as within the community) provided an interesting environment within which to work. My responsibilities and accomplishments involved design and implementation of a configuration management database, design, implementation, and maintenance of build systems, and a myriad of additional small- and medium-sized projects. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UNIX Systems Analyst/Integrator (July 2003 - December 2003, contract) TerraBox.com (Dallas, Texas) During my tenure, TerraBox.com focused entirely on its hosting and co-location business. As the sole employee of this sole-proprietorship, I was responsible for every aspect of the day-to-day facility operations. I was also responsible for providing technical support to our 300+ customers, of which roughly one third were co-location customers. I designed, implemented, and maintained change management systems, revision control systems, and server image management systems. I also developed numerous miscellaneous system and network management applications. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UNIX Operational Support Specialist (June 2002 - June 2003, contract) Ontario Hydro (Toronto, Ontario) During my tenure as a subcontractor at Ontario Hydro, I served a number of roles in a number of projects. Of the most notable was my term as technical assistant and advisor to the lead architect designing Ontario Hydro's configuration management solution. I served as a technical liaison between management, systems administrators, and developers. I provided management and the lead architect with advice and pertinent information on a broad variety of platform-specific issues, in addition to higher-level design, technical, and architectural issues relevant to configuration, change, and release management. ======================================================================== RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS Company Confidential (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) In my most recent position as "Information Technology Department" for Company Confidential, I enjoyed the following responsibilities and accomplishments (partial list in no particular order): * I was very heavily-involved in all our customers' and partners' due-diligence activities, ensuring that their conclusions were favourable; my role was managerial, supervisory, and technical; reporting to the President and CEO and the Manager, Software Development * I was primarily responsible for re-designing and re-implementing our company's sales support infrastructure, particularly our demonstration systems; reporting to and working with the VP of Sales and the Director of Worldwide Sales * I was fully-responsible for implementing the software and business processes which allowed our firm to closely monitor time spent by the operations group (75% of our employees); reporting to the CFO * I was fully responsible for re-implementing all of our I.T. systems to comply to current best practices (as I defined them); reporting to the VP of Operations and the President/CEO * I was fully responsible for virtually all Operations capital purchases, including justification, proposal, vendor management, etc. - individual purchases of up to $300,000CAD and routine purchases of $10,000-15,000CAD; reporting to and working with the President and CEO, the CFO, and the VP of Operations * I was fully responsible for virtually all Operations and Information Technology vendor/supplier relationships; reporting to and working with the VP of Operations and the CFO * I was consulted regularly and often by our in-house and outside counsel on many legal matters within which technology played a key role; reporting to and working with General Counsel, our outside counsel, and the CFO * I was consulted regularly and often by our sales team on many matters wherein technology played a role, particularly providing researched market intelligence; reporting to and working with the President and CEO, the VP of Sales, and the Director of Worldwide Sales * I was fully responsible for managing all matters related to security, both internal matters as well as product-related security functionality and processes; reporting to the President and CEO, working closely with the VP of Operations, Manager, Software Development, and the Technical Product Manager * I was a primary producer of customer-visible documentation, including technical pre-sales support material (5-15 pages per document), technical whitepapers (10-30 pages per document), and product documentation (50-100 pages per document); reporting to and working with the President/CEO, the VP of Operations, the CFO, the Manager, Software Development, and the Technical Product Manager * Regularly supervised QA activities; reported to the Manager, Software Development and working closely with our QA Engineer * Designed, implemented, and managed, "from scratch", an asset management system which tracked all I.T. assets including every network component, peripheral, desktop, server, laptop, and service; reporting to the VP of Operations and the CFO * Implemented, "from scratch", an archival backup system to protect all of our company's data - including paper-based records; reporting to the VP of Operations and the CFO * Managed and implemented an advanced security camera system "from scratch"; reporting to the President/CEO and VP of Operations * Managed and implemented a document management system with support for paper-based documents; reporting to the VP of Operations and working closely with the entire company (particularly our Technical Writer) * Managed and implemented a ticket-tracking system for use internally and by our partners and customers, which included SLA descriptor support; reporting to the VP of Operations * Managed and implemented a partner extranet to facilitate communication and work with our partners and customers; reporting to the Director, Marketing and the VP of Operations * Re-implemented every network to conform to current best practices, including implementing full VLAN and VPN support; reporting to the VP of Operations ========================================================================