| Zik Saleeba - Resume | |
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Email: zik@zikzak.net Voice: 0422 395599 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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Zik Saleeba enjoys involvement with advanced technology and designing solutions to difficult problems. He has fifteen years of commercial experience in senior roles in addition to his doctoral qualifications. He is quick to adapt his skills to new areas, is innovative in his thinking and has a great breadth of experience across the entire spectrum of computing applications.
NEC (2003,2006-2008)
- software architect - embedded linux computer for the "SmartBus" system
- satellite video / internet system for remote locations
- embedded TCP/IP networking and in-vehicle radio controller
Avanteos Pty Ltd (2003 - 2005)
- technical architect - ongoing technical architecture of a large web-based financial software system
- team leader - leader of a team of 17 developers and analysts
- key developer - "go-to" man for technical solutions, designed and co-developed Avanteos' key reporting system
- directly assisted the CTO in a wide variety of challenges
Looksmart International (1996-1998)
- architect and developer of this important search engine from its inception
- dynamic web search engine with a very high transaction throughput
- this technology was at the time one of the top web sites in the world and won
the 1999 Australian Technology Award. Platform: UNIX/C/C++/Java.
Zikzak Technologies (1999 - 2003)
- internal project: research and development of an advanced new
cross-compilation technology
- internal project: development of an entertainment product
for the palm pilot
- consulting under the "Zikzak Technologies" banner to the following
organisations:
Interval Research Corporation (2001 - 2002)
- design and implementation of a new streaming video technology
- development of the system in a trans-Pacific team environment
Traffion Technologies (2001)
- design and implementation of a new web ad tracking technology (now owned by
Red Sheriff)
- development in co-operation with Traffion's internal team
Bladen-Gibson (2000 - 2002)
- design and implementation of geo-location and mapping web site carpark.com.au
- web site development in Perl using a mysql database backend
Zoom Systems (1998 - 1999)
- a secure internet server for electronic vending including an e-commerce
system, strong encryption and a web user interface. Developed using NT/Java/Oracle
NEC Australia (2006-2008)
RAPID project: Software architect and lead developer of a linux-based operating system, drivers, support libraries and tools for an embedded computer for the "SmartBus" system. Included linux kernel and driver development as well as application development plus PIC microcontroller development.
VAN project: Part of a team developing an embedded system to control a set of in-vehicle radios. Development was in a C-like language specialised for Rabbit embedded platform. One of my tasks was to port a TCP/IP stack to the platform and develop all the associated drivers.
Avanteos Pty Ltd (2003 - 2006)
Started as a developer with Avanteos - a superannuation provider. Over time progressively more senior work was performed until the position of Technical Architect was attained. Later team leadership was added to the responsibilities. The team grew to a size of 17 people.
The greatest achievement in this role was designing a unifying reporting system to replace three old reporting systems. This new system improved maintainability and functionality of the reports significantly. Both development and design roles were involved. This system is core to Avanteos' business.
The position of Technical Architect involved a great deal of mentoring and problem solving as well as design tasks. Presentations on the system and staff training courses were also prepared. Consultation to the business was also frequently provided. Reported directly to the CTO and worked with him on estimates, high-level architectural decisions and many other challenges.
NEC Australia (2003)
Joined NEC Research Australia on a project to develop a satellite-based TV and internet system for use in remote locations in China. Development was outsourced to India so our role was to provide detailed designs for outsourcing.
This role changed to a development role when a working prototype was needed quickly. This one-man project produced a working satellite TV system based partly on modified open source software (xine).
Zikzak Technologies (2000 - 2003)
Founded "Zikzak Technologies" in 2000. Initially this was a vehicle for personal consulting activities but the company ended up employing up to three people. Business was brisk during the dotcom era but fell off after the crash.
As well as attracting a number of good clients the company provided a vehicle for some serious research. A cross-compilation system designed to convert software from one operating system to another was one such project. Some progress was made in this ambitious goal but the project was not completed. One component of this system - an x86 decompiler - is amongst the best decompilers in the world today.
Dedicated Microsystems (2002 - 2003)
A security system written in UNIX/C++/Qt required some more advanced custom user interface widgets. Several new widgets were developed which were specific to the remote security application. A new Perl-based scripting language was also added to the system.
Interval Research Corporation (2001 - 2002)
Interval Research Corporation was a company founded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen to create avenues for new products through basic research. Zikzak's involvement was in designing and developing a cross-platform streaming video system using Interval's proprietary video codec. The target was an embedded linux-based set top box.
Most of the development was done from our office in Melbourne with occasional visits to Interval in Silicon Valley.
Traffion Technologies (2001)
Traffion had recognised a failing in existing ad-revenue tracking systems - the lack of an ability to relate ad clicks to actual sales. Their system used cookies and redirects to track a user's activities through a web site to determine the effectiveness of advertising. Zikzak was called in when their existing system was unable to deal with the large volume of page requests. A totally new architecture boosted their performance by an order of magnitude and gave them additional options for scalability.
After Zikzak's design and prototyping the system was developed in co-operation with Traffion's internal team.
Bladen-Gibson (2000 - 2002)
A car parking web site using online mapping was developed in co-operation with graphic design studio Deadfish Design. Development was in Perl and mysql with some interesting algorithms being developed for fast geographical search. See an example map created by the service.
A later enhancement added a radio receiver which was able to interpret the protocol used by Melbourne's city parking signs. This permitted realtime parking availability to be displayed on the web site.
Deadfish Design (2000 - 2001)
A number of small web site related jobs were performed in collaboration with graphic design studio Deadfish Design.
Visual Purple Interactive (1999 - 2001)
Several web site development projects were done in a variety of systems including Java, JavaScript, Flash, Cold Fusion and Perl. Technical consulting for tender applications was also provided.
One example: Zikzak aided in the development of the Compaq superannuation web site. Development was in Java and ASP, concentrating on interoperability issues and ASP conversion.
Another example: The Crown Casino web site needed JavaScript communications between frames running Macromedia flash. Zikzak provided the JavaScript know-how.
Netspace Online Systems (2000 - 2002)
Developed an online e-commerce system for the ISP Netspace Online Systems to operate with the CBA credit verification system. This credit server was designed for high reliability and throughput by emulating multiple virtual terminals operating simultaneously. Concurrent operation of batched and interactive transactions were supported without performance degradation for interactive users. All development was in C++ and Solaris x86 UNIX.
A second contract from Netspace involved updating their billing system to handle new tax requirements (GST). They had chosen to replace their system entirely and were aided by Zikzak in developing part of this system in Perl, C, UNIX and Oracle.
Zoom Systems (1998-1999)
Designed and implemented in Java a central host
database system to control a wide area network of vending machines.
Challenges included electronic commerce (credit card verification)
and strong encryption.
LookSmart International (1996-1998)
Designed and implemented from scratch most of the LookSmart search engine
and maintained it through many revisions and enhancements.
The code serves several million web pages per day from a single
Sun server. This performance was achieved using a custom database
based on memory mapped files with high locality of data. The technology
developed for this system won the 1999 Australian Technology
Award
Tennyson Technologies (1996)
Implemented the PPP network protocol in C for embedded use in an ISDN
interface unit.
Vipac Engineers and Scientists (1995)
Wrote a script language and hardware interfacing
for a PC-based circuit board test rig. C++.
Monash University Department of Earth Science (1995)
UNIX system installation and administration of DEC Alpha machines for the
Monash University Department of Earth Science.
Leigh Mardon Datacard Pty Ltd (1994)
Duties included writing drivers for a video capture card, image
processing, postscript programming, UNIX system setup, Btrieve
database application programming, plastic card printer programming.
Monash University Computer Science Department (1991-1994)
Tutoring and practical courses for the Monash University Computer Science Department.
Tutorials, discussion groups and creation of practical courses in
subjects including computer architecture, systems analysis and design,
digital electronics, foundations of computing, operating system
design, digital communications and assembly language
programming.
Monash University Computer Science Department (1990)
Creation of an assembler/simulator for teaching purposes, written
in C to run in a macintosh environment. February 1992.
Australian Electronics Services (1988)
Developed a control program and user interface for a PC fax
peripheral also being developed by AES.
Australian Electronics Services (1987)
Wrote a commercial-quality video library management system.
1999: Ph.D (Computer Science), Monash University.
This was a 100% research thesis with the topic "A Self-Reconfiguring Computer System".
1990: B.Sc.(Hons) (Computer Science), Monash University.
Minor thesis topic "Structural Video Compression".
Student Computer Group
In 1991 founded and acted as leader of the Monash University General Access
UNIX Group, a group of students interested in setting
up a computer for general student use, to be run by
students. We acquired a machine for student use which was named
yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au. Acted as co-system
administrator for a year, and did much work on making
the system available to everyone at Monash University,
and on improving the system software. Yoyo was a
great success, and continues to the present day.
Pioneering Internet Service Provider
Have been operating a mini-ISP from home as a hobby since
1992. This system "zikzak.net" was among the first
public internet providers in Australia. It's gone through
many incarnations over the years but is now operated only
for a small group of friends.
Networking FAQ
The "Networking in Australia FAQ" was a list of
Frequently Asked Questions on becoming connected to
Australian networks which I maintained during the
early days of the Australian internet. The FAQ was republished
in a number of places including magazines and books
and at once stage was distributed with Apple's
internet connectivity software.
I continue to pursue my own personal research and development in my spare time.
Areas of interest:
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"A Self-Reconfiguring Computer System" by Zik M. G. Saleeba PhD thesis, 1998, Monash University Computer Science
"Public Access Sites in Australia"
"DRAMA: Dynamically reconfigurable abstract machine architecture"
"Fast prime number generation with reconfigurable logic"
"A Dynamically Reconfigurable Computer Architecture"
"A Reconfigurable Logic Array Processor"
"Structural Video Compression" |