Ryan Sweet

Rue Simonis 43

1050 Bruxelles, Belgium

Primary Phone:+32(0)2 215 8588

Daytime Phone:+31(0)715795521

Email: ryan@end.org



Senior Systems Engineer with UNIX/Linux, Programming, Database, and Project Management Skills

 

OBJECTIVE

I am a Systems Engineer currently specialising in High Performance Computing, with UNIX/Linux, programming, database, and project management experience - seeking challenging employment throughout Europe or North America in the fields of high performance computing, systems engineering, development, information systems security, or systems administration.

Desired Job Type:

Employee (permanent), or min 12 month contract

Date of Availability:

Negotiable – 8 week notice period

 

Desired Status:

Full-Time

Desired Salary:

>65k EUR / 80k USD, negotiable

 

 

CITIZENSHIP

I am an American citizen currently working in the Netherlands with a Dutch work permit obtained on the basis of my job-related skills.

PRIMARY SKILLS

Systems Engineering, HPC, Advanced Systems Administration, Programming, Networking, Consulting, Project Management, Business Development, Aerospace/Engineering systems

Quick Study, Adaptive Thinking

I can quickly learn new skills and am adept at critical/creative thinking under pressure. Almost all of my job-related skills have been gained through self-study and direct experience. Below is a summary of the skills I have developed.

Systems Engineering, HPC,

Adv. Systems Administration

Specialising in the design, integration and deployment of high performance computing system for scientists and engineers, including pre/post-processing, parallel systems , visualisation, and grid computing.

Designing, deploying, administering and supporting enterprise systems for more than eight years on UNIX /Linux (including Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Gentoo, SuSE), AIX, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD), Win32 (NT, 2000, 2003/XP)

Extensive experience with heterogeneous systems and high performance/ scientific computing, designing Beowulf Linux clusters, parallel systems programming, performance tuning, visualisation tools, and source code optimisation, grid computing (GLOBUS Toolkit,NorduGrid)

Expertise in the Linux kernel (debugging, device drivers, patching and configuring, some programming)

Extensive experience scripting and programming for systems monitoring, automation, using Perl, python, shell, and C

Extensive experience with a wide variety of Open Source software, including practical experience running mission critical systems using open source applications and tools

Extensive experience with multi-user application server computing environments and protocols including X11 and console based Unix application servers, Citrix ICA or MS Terminal Services (RDP) based Win32 application servers, web-based database driven application development

Expert knowledge of DNS, NIS, LDAP, Active Directory, SMB, NFS, DHCP, and other network protocols

Database administration and design using MySQL, PostgreSQL, limited experience with Oracle, MS SQL Server

Programming

Current expertise in Perl, PHP ,Python, FORTRAN, C, SQL, MPI, PVM less recent experience in C++, XML-SOAP, GTK, QT, limited experience with Java, Visual C++, MFC, Win32 API, Mozilla, COM Automation

Extensive experience with programming for numerical computation on high performance computer systems, particularly distributed parallel linux systems (beowulf) using compilers from Intel, Absoft, PGI, and GNU, numerical libraries such as BLAST and ATLAS, communication mechanisms such as PVM, MPI (MPICH, LAMMPI, MPICH2), and programming for grid computing systems using the GLOBUS Toolkit, GRIDLab, NorduGrid.

Less recently, experience with embedded development (cross-compilers, serial debuggers, low memory environments, flash filesystems) on Linux, UNIX, and WinCE

Experience with cross-platform development, familiar with software and systems engineering life-cycle models, requirements engineering, and their application to the software development process.

Experience with CGI and the Apache web server, mod_perl, mod_php, and the GNU development environment, Apache Jakarta, struts, and the Tomcat servlet container

Networking

In-depth knowledge of TCP/IP, IPSEC, VPN, PPP, PPTP, LAN/WAN Routing, NAT/Masquerading

Expertise with network monitoring tools and automation, tcpdump, ntop, network cabling, hardware infrastructure some knowledge of Cisco products, Cisco IOS

Security

More than 6 years of following security trends and applying security best practices to enterprise systems

Expert at firewall configuration/design philosophy (tools: pf, iptables, etc.)

Knowledge of current security tools (nessus, nmap, snort)

Experience performing security audits and writing security policy, helping victims recover from security breaches

Experience in automating security scanning/auditing

Consulting,

Project Management

Documentation

Business Development

Aerospace/ Engineering Systems

Extensive experience delivering advice to customers on systems integration, automation, network infrastructure, strategy, and planning

Can work independently or in a team, have led teams, managed others, and participated in recruitment on several levels since 1996

Very Accomplished in the practice of requirements engineering and project management, including a variety of commercial and open source project management tools.

Experienced with Concurrent Engineering theory and practices

Extensive experience on complex international, inter-agency projects that require a lot of coordinating, documenting, tracking, and diplomacy

Comfortable writing all sorts of documentation, reports, training materials, and sales content

Experience with developing new business, writing marketing materials, defining market/technical strategy, business planning, lead generation, and budgeting

Familiar with a wide array of engineering and analysis requirements, terminology, and software packages, including those for structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, thermal analysis, avionics, and design

Languages

Native English speaker, can also speak and write Nederlands (Dutch), and have _very_, _very_ basic skills in French, German.

 

EXPERIENCE

7/1999 - Present

AOES Group, BV - Senior Consultant - Leiden, NL

Advanced Operations and Engineering Services Group, BV provides engineering consultancy to the European aerospace industry, with a primary focus on the European Space Agency. The focus of the IT group is on high performance scientific computing and server-based computing. Since 2003 I have been leading our new business unit delivering services for High Performance Computing, developing from scratch a new business unit within an existing company, responsible for developing the technical direction, marketing materials, generating leads, writing quotations, making sales visits to customers, business planning and budgeting. Technically, my role as a lead systems engineer is designing both HPC infrastructure and application systems for the company and its customers, having deployed a wide variety of distributed parallel systems totaling thousands of CPUs.

I am usually overseeing and executing between two and five projects of various sizes, taking each from initial consultation through the complete life cycle of systems engineering. I also act as an internal consultant, advising our other systems engineers throughout the course of their projects and conducting research for the company on new technology areas. For several years prior I had been leading our projects in clustering/high performance computing, including the deployment of multiple Linux clusters. Additionally I have built several web-based database applications, and designed the large-scale automated deployment of Microsoft Windows NT Terminal Server/ Citrix application servers across all of the European Space Agency.

 

10/1996-6/1999

Network Computing Devices (NCD) - Senior Support Engineer - Portland, OR

Jan. 1998 - June 1999: Level 4 Technical Support Engineer - NCD manufactures hardware and software to  support server based computing: Thin-clients, X Terminals, Network Computers, and the server software to support them. During this time I was responsible for "end of the line" technical support for the whole range of the company's hardware and software products. I was required to work closely with engineering, marketing and quality assurance on a daily basis, and was part of two product development teams. I was responsible for supporting many of our Fortune 500 customers, and thus traveled and worked in data centers across the country at companies like Ford, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, IBM, and Federal Express, with the emphasis being on making efforts to “save the day” when the local account reps or VP deemed that the deal was in trouble. I became familiar with the product source code and was required to resolve problems to the level of pinpointing the portions of the code that were failing and sometimes providing engineering with a patch. For 6 months in 1998 I was assigned to NCD UK, where I worked on behalf of IBM at customer locations throughout the UK implementing NCD and IBM technologies and consulting. For two months in 1999 I was reassigned to NCD engineering to assist with coding in embedded applications on the business NC product line. Because of the cross-platform nature of NCD’s products, I was required to be competent at administration and network design across the whole range of commercial and free UNIX systems, as well as Microsoft Windows, VMS, and embedded/proprietary systems.

1996 - Jan 1998: Senior Technical Support  - I started at NCD supporting their PC X server, but quickly was promoted until I reached Level 3 Technical Support in the WinCenter (provided X11 connectivity for NT apps) group. I was responsible for support escalations and for maintaining support for "hot-sites" (big customers or important sales). I designed (with a colleague) a load-testing suite for server-based computing and used it to help replicate customer problems with large deployments, increasing the ability of our team to find scalability problems. I worked closely with the Citrix WinFrame Multiuser-NT kernel and kernel debugging, and liased with QA and engineering on problem resolution. During assignments for NCD Consulting Services, I was often designing application servers for enterprise deployment. I developed an extensive testing lab, departmental servers, troubleshooting and automation tools to enhance the effectiveness of the NCD support team.

 

5/1996 - 10/1996

Network Administrator/Web Design Consultant - Sand Mountain Design, LLC - Portland, OR

I started Sand Mountain Design as a web design firm with three partners. I maintained the small office network or UNIX, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows computers, and shared the design responsibilities.

 

6/1995 - 6/1996

Teleport Internet Services - Senior Technical Support - Portland, OR

I started as a support tech, soon promoted to Senior Tech. I supported dial-up internet access, assisted in UNIX shell scripting/troubleshooting, developed internal tools to assist the support department, and  packaged, scripted, documented the collection of software that the company provided to its Macintosh users.

 

EDUCATION

1997

Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

Portland, OR

1994-1995

Reed College

Portland, OR

1993-1994

Missouri Southern State College

Joplin, MO

I left a Russian Literature and English program at Reed for financial reasons, and stayed away to pursue job opportunities in the computer industry. Since then I have invested several thousand hours of self-study on job-related topics, such as software engineering, high performance computing, complex systems design, and project management.

 

REFERENCES (additional references available upon request)

Alan Kinder

AOES Group, BV

IT Manager

alan.kinder@aoes.com

Chuck Forslund

Network Computing Devices

Manager

Charlief40@comcast.net

Matt Hickey

Collegenet

Web Developer

matt@tidalpool.org

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

My personal interests include spending time with my family, travel, gardening, cooking, and artwork.