1. SEPTEMBER 2015
PAGE: 1 of 9
Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Kevin G SLADE
EMPLOYMENT
Background: Managing director of Sciadopitys Enterprises Ltd
A shareholder in Kiwisoft Programs Ltd.
Position Sought: A role involving stimulation, technical challenge, people contact and
the ability to make a positive contribution to the company.
Location: Auckland region preferred.
Availability: Immediate
Contacts
Anytime: 022-101-8609
Home: 09-600-3120
Email: kevin@kiwisoft.co.nz
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
NZ Certificate Data Processing
NZ Certificate Statistics
30+ years in IT.
Tosca Training Course
St Johns First Aid Course Level 2
Formerly a Member of NZCS
Executive Summary
Skills Current Endace Gen-i Vodafone Provenco Esphion Kiwisoft ATI
Consultant ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Agile ▓ ▓
Project Based ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Selenium ■ ■
Tosca ■
Mentoring ■
Managed software development and
electronics development teams of up to
10 people.
▓ ▓ ▓
Full knowledge and experience with the
SDLC.
▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Contract Testing and QA. ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Software development ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Business analysis ■ ▓ ▓ ▓
System Architecture ▓ ▓ ▓
Database Design ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Application & server installation, support ▓ ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
OS installation and security ▓ ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Device Driver development ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Release & Change Management ▓ ■ ▓ ▓ ▓
2. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Embedded systems design and
development
▓ ▓ ▓
Training and Mentoring ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
XML ▓ ▓
Soap ▓ ▓
SoapUI & Groovy ▓ ▓
C & C++ ■ ▓ ▓ ▓
Perl ■ ▓ ■ ▓
sh, ksh, bash ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ sh
Assemblers (various hardware
architectures)
■ ■ ▓ ▓
SQL & PL-SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL ■ ▓ ▓ ISAM
Java ■ ■ ■
Fortran ▓ ▓
Cobol ■ ▓
CVS and Subversion ■ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Assorted OSs (Linux,Windows, Unix and
many more)
▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓
Able to communicate with Electronics
engineers in reasonably technical terms.
▓ ▓ ▓
Legend
▓ Used extensively
■ Used moderately
C Used only C
sh Used only sh
SQL Used only SQL and SQL tools
ISAM Used only ISAM databases
3. SEPTEMBER 2015
PAGE: 3 of 9
Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Endace 2010 – 2015
Contract & Permanent. Senior Network Test Analyst
Testing Linux based network recording systems.
Extensive use of linux systems to provide test data delivery
Mainly used Linux workstations to test the Sytstems Under Test (SUT)
Developed Test scripts, often using Perl and Groovy as the scripting languages to automate
the testing.
Developed Test plans in Excel with the object of manual and possible automation.
Used Selenium briefly and Tosca to automate GUI testing using windows VMs
Tested the Network monitoring probe software
Tested the Analytics software both with the probes and later built in to the probes
Supported the infrastructure needed to provide both data and services to allow the probes to
be tested
Achievements
Worked as part of Agile teams working on various projects.
Maintained and extended the in-house command line testing tool for testing of the Endace
Probes
Mentored the team members in the use of this tool.
Setup two systems to provide virtual systems that allowed the instances to be quickly
swapped using predefined templates. Additional virtual machine templates could be added
with little overhead.
Implemented test suites for the SOAP interface using SoapUI Pro. As a result of this a lot of
previously hard to find issues were located and resolved.
Configured and maintained Remote Authentication Servers. These were Tacacs, Radius and
LDAP.
Mentored both the QA and the engineering team in the use of the Remote Authentication
servers and the debugging of authentication issues.
Configured and maintained a mechanism that allowed 2 systems, one in Hamilton and one in
Auckland to maintain duplicate copies of testing data. These were kept synchronised by
means of nightly cron jobs. Each of these systems held about 7.5TB of data.
When the Auckland system was damaged by a serious power outage, the system was
restored from the system in Hamilton over a period of 3 days without impacting the normal
company operations.
Set-up and maintained transmit systems that allowed the testing data to be distributed to the
systems under test as needed. The transmit systems were local to the master Data systems.
Each of the transmit systems held about 500GB of data.
Liased with the documentation team to provide technical support and to provide access to
required infrastructure.
Performed Security testing on the probe systems
Created test suites for creation and testing of SSL certificates
4. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Gen-i 2007 – 2009
Contract - Senior Technical Test Engineer.
Worked as part of the agile project team
Developed Test cases and test scripts, often using Groovy as the scripting language to
automate the testing
Initially tested the web services, using SoapUI to test the SOAP and XML interfaces. Became
the SME for this.
Tested the accuracy of the data in the SQL Sever database.
Tested access to Telecom internal systems usually with SoapUI.
Enabled one development group to write .NET interfaces to the back end systems by using
SoapUI and WireShark to see what a working call looked like and what the .NET code was
sending.
Debugged network stability issues using WireShark.
Tested the provisioning of Web site hosting and domain name purchasing. Became the SME
for this.
Tested and debugged the internal control web site used by operations and the help desks.
Tested the billing operation within the portal and ensured that the billing information was both
accurate and time invariant. The billing code was fragile as it was designed to be replaced
inside 12 months. Again I was the SME for this.
Trained others in the tools I was using as there was a desire to utilize these tools in other
areas.
Logged issues with as complete analysis as possible.
Worked with BAs, developers , testers and architects to ensure that problems and
shortcomings were addressed or at least acknowledged.
When my contract was to be cancelled I was asked to hand over the testing areas for which I
was responsible to a permanent employee of Gen-i, in 3 weeks.
IBM / Vodafone 2006 – 2007
Contract – Data Load Tester, BAU tester
Woked as part of the project teams
Provided support to the load and defect analysis for the Billing Data Load task.
Worked with the PPE testing team on BAU testing for Australia and Fiji.
Provided Perl and sh scripts for data generation, system status and error analysis.
Provided detailed error reports for defect analysis.
Worked with the development teams to ensure the data was both clean and accurately loaded
into the Oracle databases.
Taught some of the teams more efficient ways to utilize the services such as SSH to enable
password less logons.
Mentored members of the teams to improve the efficiency of the project operations.
Helped take the Fiji system live, as I was the only one left that knew who to contact in the
event of issues.
IAG July 2006 – August 2006
Contract – Technical systems support.
Joined the BAT team to provide technical support to the application testers. The BAT team was
subsequently disbanded.
5. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Provenco Retail Automation Ltd 2003 – 2006
Contract then Permanent – Senior Embedded Tester
Quality control and testing of the G5OPT petrol pump outdoor payment terminals.
Involved in the full QA Release process.
Designed the testing frameworks and developed tests run within these frameworks to provide
both regression testing of the firmware releases and validation of the new features that were
implemented.
Installed and supported the CVS environment and providing technical support to both the
application developers and the application testing teams.
Provided test suits enabling the G5OPT terminals to be EMV certified, for use with credit card
payments, on the first attempt.
Provided architecture and design support for a Linux embedded forecourt controller including
remote update facilities.
Ported some of Provenco's systems from Windows to Linux including moving the database
from SapDB to MaxDB.
Created high precision timers for use with the Java systems.
Supported the Linux systems used by some of the full system testers.
Trained and mentored members of the teams to improve the efficiency of the project
operations.
Esphion Ltd (formerly JSD Ltd) 2001 – 2003
Permanent – Architect, Team lead Developer
Architected the system based on requirements from the technical directors for the Denial of
Service Deflection system.
The active part of the solution was an interpreter kernel module, with interpreted code loaded
into the kernel module.
Used C/C++ for most of the development. Some was in Perl, shell scripts or similar
languages.
Lead the team of up to 5 young developers that assisted with the implementation.
Mentored the developers in robust code design.
Lead code reviews of all code proposed for inclusion in the project
Developed technical sections of the code such as TCP/IP fragmented packet reassembly and
on the fly exchange of the running DOSD code.
Supported the developers creating the device drivers, interpreters, code generators for the
interpreter and the installers.
Located and negotiated hardware supply agreements.
Installed the systems in-house and had the junior developers certified to work on the
hardware.
Lead the teams installing systems at the test sites.
Implemented an ISAM database that pulled statistics from the running interpreter.
Implemented the Statistics analysis that was included in the statistics gathering subsystem.
Implemented the statistical reporting system of the traffic types to allow traffic type variations
to be monitored as type anomalies could be indications of a DOS attack.
Reviewed and tested the initial releases until a Q/A department was created.
6. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Kiwisoft Programs Ltd 1984 – 2001
Permanent – Director, Software Engineering Manager, Architect, Development Team
Leader, Systems administrator, Technical support, Developer, Tester, Installer, Field
Support.
Many of the projects involved embedded systems of one size or another, ranging from very small 8 bit
micros to quite large systems that were totally hidden from the users.
Throughout all of the projects I was involved with end-user training and when we had teams working
with us on development tasks I was also mentoring those teams. Some of the teams wore employed
by Kiwisoft and others worked for a variety of our clients.
JSD Ltd
Jan 2001- March 2001 worked on contact to JSD Ltd assisting with the product specification and
design.
Air New Zealand
In 2000, contracted to Air NZ working on interfaces between the Sun Solaris based Oracle based
AirCrews and Air Ops systems and external mainframe systems. The interfaces were all written in
C++ using OO and STL objects. One of the interfaces was to notify Air Traffic Control of most national
flights and the subsequent changes to these flights. The changes had to be as close to real-time as
practical. Within the constraints of the systems, five minutes was considered acceptable for the
notification of flight changes to ATC. This program could not connect to events within Oracle due to
the constraints of the system in which Oracle was the database component. The method used was to
provide an audit table that tracked all the changes to tables of interest. Then, on a periodic basis
controlled by cron, the task filtered the records in the audit table for changes that were of interest and
then flagged all the records so that they are not processed in subsequent runs.
The other interfaces were strictly batch processes; collecting and interchanging leave information with
an IBM mainframe hosted payroll application.
Forestry Corporation of NZ Ltd
Was involved with the client about the scope of the problem to be solved and designed some mock-
up solutions to allow the scope and the details of the system to be identified. With this done, I then
architected the system so that it was able to do the initial tasks requited, and also had sufficient
flexibility to allow the later processes required to be added without needing major changes to the
systems.
With the overall architecture completed, then designed and assisted with the development of a client-
server based network system of image capture and analysis of piles of logs to identify labels and
count logs.
Areas of responsibility:
Managed a team of up to 10 people consisting of software developers, and electronics engineers
as well as the network installers.
Design and installation of the assorted network topologies (TCP/IP, FDDI, 10BaseFL, and 1.6Mb
wireless) to be used and the integration of these with the existing systems in use.
Oversee the construction of a person portable backpack computer and camera in weather-proof
housings. In addition to the construction oversight, was responsible for the development of software
diagnostic suites to verify hardware performance.
Development of the camera capture software. This was written to run under DOS in a 486
booted from a local solid state disk and used multiple threads allowing the user interface state
machine and hardware control to run independently of the compression and file I/O tasks. The
capture software provided an interface to a SCSI based camera, a user interface via 6 buttons and
7. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
24x4 display, a radio network interface, embedded compression of the images and the monitoring of
various hardware states including temperature control and battery levels.
Robotic Microscope
Designed and built robotic microscopes for use as interactive exhibits at museums and the like. The
first part of the project was to design and have manufactured the mechanical hardware for the
microscope. The initial manufacturing was done in Japan. The controller interface and the stepping
motor controllers was designed and prototyped locally. Once the prototype was sufficiently stable, the
controller board design was performed in-house with the PCB board production being done in
Australia, and the final assembly of the boards was done locally. The PCB had 5 axis control, each
capable of being used with or without travel limit sensors and each axis had a reference point. The
diagnostics for the PCBs' and the drivers for the microscope were developed by myself, and I
assisted my business partner to develop the user interface and the script development tools. Some of
the issues included the ability to allow foreign language input and character display. Another element
in the software allowed the development of the display scripts on a microscope and the script could
then be moved to one or more other microscopes and with some calibration reference points set, the
script could run on the new microscope as the implementer intended. Frequently the scripts and
display materials were developed in one country and sent to other countries for use. Systems were
installed in New Zealand, United States of America, France, and Taiwan the last I heard. The user
interface was a custom made joystick and some other control functions, that were designed to be
used and abused by the general public. They did get broken but very infrequently..
Archival solution for the Auckland Morgue
Worked with the pathologists at the Auckland Morgue / Department of pathology or Auckland
University where we provided systems to archive both post mortem results and the pathology slides
to allow on-screen comparison of a current side with up-to 3 other save specimen slides. This allowed
the pathologist to make detailed comparisons and to teach students by using the displayed images to
ensure that every-one was looking at the correct area of the slide and the appropriate artefacts.
Other significant systems included:
Non contact suit measurement systems for a Japanese bespoke tailor.
Tinted spectacle lens simulation system for Japanese opticians,
Photo identikit system for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department,
Production of silk screen printing patterns of carpet manufacturing.
Porting of a DOS/Windows package written in C and C++ to run in a UNIX environment for Telecom.
This included redesign of the data management to efficiently analyse the 10+Gb of communications
traffic data that was presented to the program for each run.
Other smaller tasks.
Redesign of a futures trading system from a proprietary database to use ORACLE with SQL access.
As well as moving to Oracle, the one large program was into a number of smaller components that
could be easily processed concurrently.
Installation of Linux hosted SAMBA servers to provide a NT look-alike network hosting Windows,
OS/2 and Linux clients and Linux based e-mail server. Updating of both the Linux kernels and Samba
servers from source. These networks allowed clients to share data and printers, including the hosting
of multi-user databases for windows clients.
Creation of C++ CGI programs that accessed C-tree ISAM databases to provide sophisticated text
searching and matching capabilities to locate records from multi-gigabyte text databases rapidly.
Creation of Linux based firewalls to protect a site from unauthorised access and the use of tools such
as Satan and Saint to verify that the firewall is not exposing the internal network to the outside world.
This also includes the updating and rebuilding of the latest versions of the Linux kernels. Coupled with
this is the set-up and management of both an Apache based Web server providing multiple virtual
8. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
hosts, internal and external DNS servers to allow internal clients to access internal resources directly,
but allowing controlled access to the outside world through the firewall. Also, mail servers to allow
multiple virtual mail servers to be hosted on one system.
Developed a colour scanner an d once it was operational attempted to lodge a patent in Japan to find
that the concept had been lodged 3 weeks earlier as an idea.
General experience included
Systems management and installation of Linux Server systems.
Systems management and oversight of the installation of Internet connections for clients.
Perform a Year 2000 audit of the embedded systems for a major New Zealand food
processor.
Systems management and installation of IBM LAN Server and IBM Warp Server systems and
interconnection with Novell Unix, Linux, OSF/1 (DEC UNIX), OS/2 and DOS.
Installation and support of e-mail servers and clients.
Assisted a client to start to understand and design a fix for a Year 2000 problem in a
proprietary database.
Systems management and installation of networks, including Novell Netware, DEC ALPHA
systems using OSF/1, 486 systems with UNIXWARE from Novell, OS/2 with both TCP/IP and
Netware (allowing the UNIX and OSF/1 systems to access Netware print services and file
systems via lpr and NFS to the OS/2 system).
Portied DOS and Windows code to and from OS/2 and UNIX. This has also included use of
version control systems to ensure that DOS, OS/2 and UNIX code has remained
synchronised as part of a major development project.
Created Interfaces and software drivers for scanners, colour image printers, and laser printers
using MS-DOS, UNIX and OS/2.
Extensive experience in PC hardware sourcing & assembly and integration of both standard
and non-standard devices into various hardware platforms including PC’s, DEC PDP-11’s,
DEC Alpha’s and various proprietary systems
Assisted with the design and development of 2k and 4k CCD cameras and ID analysis
software systems
Designed and implemented of archival systems to utilise both WORM and CD-R systems.
Supervisied and constructied printed circuit boards.
Designed and developed an OS/2 based multi threaded FAX server.
Co-designer and implementer of the Kiwisoft Document Archiving System
1. Responsible for Kiwisoft customer hardware and software installations internationally.
International demonstrations of Kiwisoft applications.
Developed of a C-tree server as a Novell NLM and extensions to provide automatic mirroring
across Novell Netware servers.
E-Prom code development for embedded processors.
Development of XENIX device drivers.
Development of phototypesetter cross-assembler and image handling routines for the APS-5
typesetter.
Device driver modifications and debugging of a third party device driver to allow use on a later
revision of the DEC IAS operating system.
Developed a raster scan technique for single boundary polygons.
Designed, developed and implemented a colour image input scanner with interfaces to the
DEC PRO 380 graphics Workstation.
Contract programming to Kiwisoft Programs for conversion and extension of CADPIC from
Commodore 64 to CPM including converting from basic & assembler to C.
9. SEPTEMBER 2015
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Kevin Slade
IT Professional – Software Manager, Testing , SDLC, Development, Implementation
Auckland Technical Institute (ATI) 1974 – 1984
Permanent – Programmer, Operations Manager, Records Manager, Technical Support.
Computer Systems Manager for Auckland Technical Institute for five years. During this time,
acted as software consultant to the NZ Department of Education and other New Zealand
Technical Institutes.
Systems programmer at Auckland Technical Institute for eight years, on ICL 1904s, ICL 2980,
DEC PDP-8e, DEC PDP-11/34, and Data General MV-8000.
Involved with students in several roles including solving problems that the teaching staff could
not resolve and working with the teaching staff and the students to write RFI's and RFU's,
then assisting with the analysis of the replies. I was also involved with the testing of the
proposed systems from both the design of the tests and the analysis if the results. This was
usually done by asking questions and forcing the students to critically evaluate the responses
or results.
Ran and managed the examination results system for ATI.
I had the second Unix source license in New Zealand and implemented disk and multi-line
serial device drivers for Unix while learning C.
Database design and administration using TOTAL from Cincom Systems, DMS on ICL, and
DG DBMS.