Objective

As a Microsoft technology specialist, I love to develop new customer solutions and extend my expertise with new .NET, SQL Server and Web Services products.

Note Please do not contact me unless you have a real position available and it matches my requirements. You should send details of the position (or a link) with the initial e-mail.

Email james.snape<nospam>@gmail<nospam>.com

Phone +44 7790 925 202 (Cell)

Address Available on request

Web http://www.jamessnape.me.uk

Skills & Qualifications

Primary skills: Architecture, Microsoft .NET, ASP.NET, Windows Workflow (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), SQL Server (SQL), Analysis Services (MDX), Reporting Services, Team System, Project Management (Agile, Scrum, MSF4, RUP),

Other technologies include: C++, DirectShow, COM/OLE, MSMQ, XML, XSLT, XSD, OLEDB, ADO, ODBC, HTML, CSS, IIS, ASP, VBScript, JavaScript, Visual Studio, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Patterns, NUnit, CodeSmith, MS Project, Enterprise Library, Source Control, Rational Unified Process, XP, Use Cases, VB6

Employment History

Mar 2006 - Present at Microsoft Limited (Application Development Consultant)

Roles include: Consultancy, Architecture, Workshops, Performance Labs, Product Team Liaison, Engineering Processes

May 2000 - Mar 2006 at Exony Limited (Development Manager)

Roles include: Product Architecture, Customer Solution Architecture, Feature Development, Project Management and Development Lead. It's a small start-up so I do anything as required. Products are related to call centre optimisation and control - CTI, Business Intelligence and Platform Integration.

Aug 1994 - Apr 2000 at Sony Broadcast (Senior Research and Development Engineer)

Roles include: Project Management, Product Architecture, Development and Liaison with Japanese Product Groups. Products were all related to broadcast: video servers, editors, DVD authoring.

Employment Detail (in reverse date order)

Present: Application Development Consultant

I work with a broad range of customers from small ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) up to large enterprises, and engage in all aspects of the software development lifecycle from architecture through to performance and scale testing.

I get involved in all kinds of development-related work including reviewing application design or specific code, helping to troubleshoot problems, writing code samples, delivering training, and do just about anything else involved with software development.

In the course of my day-to-day activities I cover virtually every Microsoft technology but specialise in .NET and SQL Server.

Mar 2006: Engineering Manager

Oversaw most of the projects at Exony from an architectural and management perspective. Also the project manager for our Business Intelligence reporting product. This is a web based product used in all the major UK telcos for both enterprise and hosted call centre BI. I also maintained my SQL, DTS and C# skills by developing some of the features.

Completed a number of projects for Exony in the last five years, including:

Architected and deployed the sit-up.tv auction system
Moved the R&D department on to onto daily build, bug tracking and more agile development methods
Designed and implemented a SQL/OLAP installer tool to reduce Exony’s upgrade and patching costs
Gathering requirements from a customer in France
Participated in the both the Reporting Services 2000 Beta and SQL Server 2005 TAP
Architect and project management for the latest release of our reporting platform currently being installed for a US government department’s call centre
Currently writing MS Reporting Services rendering and delivery extensions

Apr 2001: Exony Gateway (Architect)

The Gateway is Exony's integration product. It consists of an XML processing pipeline in the core with a multitude of equipment specific connectors allowing us to connect most telecoms equipment such as ICM and voice response units to back end customer systems. The product performs a similar role to Microsoft's BizTalk, but within the real-time constraints imposed by telecoms. It is usually deployed in a hosted mode so there are internal application firewalls to ensure processing from one customer can not affect the other customers running in the same application instance.

My role on the project was to create the initial architecture and implementation. This architecture has survived three versions and is still in today’s implementation.

May 2000: INsight Call Centre Management (Project Leader)

INsight is a web based call centre system that allows agents to view charts and statistics on various operational aspects. The project is a typical n-tier application distributed across a number of servers. The main communications schemes used in the system are: HTTP, XML, COM and OLEDB.

Again, I was the main product architect. This architecture is also the basis for today’s product, four versions later.

Apr 1999: DVD Authoring (Project Leader)

This project was a single and multi-seat DVD authoring system with two main aims; to build a market-beating product and introduce a number of new high level authoring concepts. The market research indicated that we would have, at most, 12 months to produce the product so schedules have been very tight. I decided that a smaller team of 10 high quality engineers would be the best approach to the schedule constraints.

The product architecture is based around a C++ framework that can host ActiveX controls in dock-able windows and provides a number of services to the application in the form of COM objects. A traditional COM based document object model provides structured storage persistence and the ability to script. XML descriptions of the DVD are generated and passed to the multiplexer for DVD creation. The multiplexer used a combination of XSL and script components to create DVD binaries. DVD data is then injected into a DirectShow filter graph for preview.

My main role was as a design authority and project lead.

Nov 1998: DVD Market Research

This was a short investigation into the needs of the DVD authoring market. This was at a time when there were only a few companies creating DVDs in the UK and Europe. It was difficult to ascertain these needs but I concluded that the DVD production market would follow a similar trend to that of CDs but much more rapidly. Christmas 1999 would be the main consumer discovery of the format. This investigation also enabled me to build and maintain a number of relationships with DVD authors.

May 1998: Concept Editor (Project Leader)

This was a pure research project to provide a basis for Sony's next generation of non-linear editors. This involved the analysis, design and implementation of a modular system that could be used in a number of product configurations from news to post production. The modularity of the system also enabled research to be carried out on a number of new editing techniques.

May 1997: Digital Non-Linear Editing (Project Leader)

The project was to port an existing product from Window 3.1 to NT 4.0. In addition, we were required to refactor the existing code base into a maintainable architecture and implement new customer requirements.

The initial port took only two weeks before the system was running under NT. However, due the existing code structure and many new features required, I persuaded management to allow me to take a different approach. The system was redesigned and the existing code was pulled across in small sections. This allowed the quality of the system to be maintained whilst new features were added to the system.

This project also enabled me to build the capability of the three graduate team members, two of which were promoted soon after project completion. The original product used low-level access to the parallel port. I implemented an NT kernel mode driver to provide this functionality to the system.

Jan 1997: Server Integration Feasibility Study (Project Leader)

The project was a very short study to prove that it was possible to integrate Sony's three server products (On-Air, Daily and Archive) into a single hierarchical storage management system. Each of these products had been implemented by different groups within Sony and had widely different data models and communications.

I abstracted both data and communications to produce a common server model and implemented DCOM adapters for each of the servers. The COM interfaces were then used as a basis for a universal client.

Jun 1996: Daily Server Hot Standby (Project Leader)

After the initial delivery of the video server, the customers requested the addition of a dual hot standby fail over system. This was a very challenging project as fail over had not been part of the original requirements specification and the back end device control systems had no redundancy built in. I developed a mechanism for fail resistant RPC, socket communication and database replication. The resulting system was similar in design to the Microsoft Message Queue server that exists today.

Sep 1995: Daily Server (Research & Development Engineer)

I was then transferred back to the Daily Server project to take responsibility for the database subsystem. This involved implementation of SQL Server schemas, stored procedures, triggers and C++ wrapper classes using ODBC.

Approximately half way through the project the system was sold to NHK (Japanese broadcaster) to be used as a content transmission server. This changed the entire focus of the project but enabled me to adapt the database to cope with both scenarios.

Apr 1995: Sony/Oracle Gateway (Research & Development Engineer)

After a successful demonstration, I was asked to develop the product with Oracle. Whilst Oracle took over the Journalist Workstation, I designed and implemented a loose replication server between the Journalist Workstation and Daily Server using SQL Server Open Data Services.

Jan 1995: Journalist Workstation (Research & Development Engineer)

The project was a joint venture with Oracle to produce a networked clip editing and script writing tool for television news journalists. I was brought on to the project to work with the existing engineer in order to produce a viable demonstration at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show that I attended in April.

Aug 1994: Daily Server (Research & Development Engineer)

I was very lucky to join the department at the start of their first major software project and was immediately involved with the system analysis team. We used Rumbaugh's Objective Modelling Technique (OMT) to architect a video server for television news organisations.

Education

Kings College, London

Computer Systems & Electronics

Bachelor of Engineering (July 1994)