Cogent Consulting

Contact me

Send me an email to contact me directly.

Personality, Teamwork, Problem Solving

I enjoy learning from others and sharing my own skills. I prefer working in a team environment where I can collaborate with others and my individual efforts help achieve a shared goal. I have a calm and approachable manner and respond well to constructive criticism. I am a natural and imaginative problem solver and take great satisfaction in creating simple elegant solutions.

Fitness, Action, Food

I regularly ride bicycle around town and enjoy mountain biking on weekends. I am a past member of the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club (MUMC) and regularly go bushwalking and skiing in winter. I have a passion for food and cooking. I enjoy keeping fit and healthy, and have practiced yoga and pilates for a number of years.

Reading, Travel, Learning

I enjoy reading fiction and technical books, and have recently formed a book club with a group of friends. I studied German, Vietnamese and Japanese and in recent years have travelled to France, China and Japan. In the last few years I have obtained my motorcycle licence, a certificate in massage therapy and done classes in wheel-thrown pottery and life drawing.

Summary

Dan has been delivering software for more than a decade. His experience as a software developer, team lead and consultant allow him to contribute to projects big and small. He is comfortable engaging with a technical or business audience. He seeks to share his technical and agile skills with those around him, increasing the team’s capacity while still being pragmatic about meeting project goals.

Consultant, Cogent Consulting

Senior Developer, Sensis

May 2007 – May 2009
Delivered Java and Ruby on Rails web applications involving the Yellow Pages business directory content, including systems to manage customer content and support the user search experience. Involved in estimating and planning new work, mentoring developers, incrementally improving system design and researching new search algorithms.

Business directory search webservice
Was a key developer in refactoring a web application to expose directory search as a webservice to internal and external users. Built up a domain-specific language for automated integration testing of the webservice.

Java (Hibernate3, Spring (IoC), Cxf, Jsp), Oracle, Apache, Tomcat and Jetty, FAST.

Banner advertising for affiliate websites
Built Rails application to manage advertising content and produce cached banner content for supporting high-volume websites. Used javascript to ensure text wrapping and layout consistency.

Ruby, Rails, Apache, Oracle, FAST.

Other Projects

Improved Search – Refactored and rebuilt advertiser search using FAST search tools. Built proof-of-concept incorporating new search ideas for evaluation (Java).
Send to Mobile – Allows users to send a Yellow Pages listing to their phone (Java).
Multimedia content management – Application for configuring advertiser content for Yellow Pages, including video, logos and textual content (Ruby on Rails).
Antfarm – Pilot for advertiser search including user ranking. (Ruby on Rails)

Senior Developer & Team Lead, Internet Business Systems (IBS), Melbourne

2005 – 2007
Delivered Java web applications as a developer and team leader involving asset-based finance, including a dealer commission system and an automated credit approval system. Initiated and influenced improvements to agile process and system architecture. Regularly facilitated meetings of up to 40 developers. Provided domain modeling advice to developers and technical advice to customers and analysts.

Modularization of asset-based finance system
Played a leading role in re-architecting an existing system, developed over more than 4 years, into more encapsulated modules. Introduced the Gateway pattern to clearly identify module responsibilities and collaboration. Produced a road-map for further refactoring, including the migration to new technologies including elements of the Spring Framework. Identified future goals such as distributing deployment of the system modules.

Java (Hibernate2 & 3, Spring (IoC & MVC), Struts, Jsp, Javascript, Jasper Reports, Xfire), MSSQL Server & HSQL, Apache Tomcat.

Automated credit approval system
Led a team of 8 to successfully deliver a new automated credit approval system, augmenting a previously fully manual process. Integrated with 3rd party credit scoring service (Baycorp). Delivered functionality iteratively over two 6-week release cycles, including continual customer involvement in prioritisation of stories during each release.

Java (Hibernate2, Struts, Jsp, Javascript, Axis & JAXB), MSSQL Server & HSQL, Apache Tomcat.

Other Projects

Loan Origination – Captured load application details (Java including Spring Webflow and MVC)
Letter Generation – Automatic generation of PDF letters (Java including Jasper Reports)
Commissions – Calculation and payment of dealer commissions based on loan sales

Senior Software Engineer, WMIND LLC, Connecticut, USA (Melbourne office)

1998 – 2004
Designed and implemented a software in Java central to research efforts in artificial intelligence, and the prediction of financial markets and trading methods.

Automated prediction and trading system
Created automated financial prediction system. Worked with complex computationally intensive algorithms, parameter optimization using genetic algorithms, and automation of trading signals. Created audit trail of prediction model changes, and ensured valid archiving and reproducibility of results.

Java (JDBC, Serialization, Swing, AWT, Email), MySQL, Linux (Bash scripting, crontab)

Other Projects

Agent-based Neural Network – Ambitious distributed system for developing artificial intelligence capabilities, including natural language processing, numerical tranformation and prediction and text processing (Java including RMI).

Education

1994-1998 University of Melbourne

Bachelor of Engineering with 1st Class Honours (Software Eng.)
Year-long team projects with industry clients, OO design, Java and C/C++, testing methodology and project management. Awarded top graduate by Australian Computer Society.

1986-1993 Preshil, The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, Kew

Victorian Certificate of Education, achieving an A+ average.