Curriculum Vitae of Alex Bennée

[Summary] [Skills] [Recent Employment] [Education] [Contact]

Summary

I am a software engineer with 16 years experience in the industry, mostly at Lead or Senior engineer level. I have played a leading role in full product life-cycles, as both a technical lead and as a manager. I work well in a team, and have found it rewarding leading teams of up to 8 engineers. I have focused on system software throughout my career, and to develop this expertise I have extended my knowledge and skills in a number of supporting areas. I believe in writing clean, readable code, but am always careful in my reviewing to balance conceptual perfection with reality. I am a pragmatic open source advocate and I contribute to several open source projects as well as share most of my personal code.

Skills

Languages: C/C++, Assembly, Perl, Python, Bash, Java, Emacs Lisp, SDL
Architectures: 6809, 68k, PPC, x86/x86-64, SuperH, SPARC
Platforms: Linux, pSOS, vxWorks, bespoke in house OS’s
Tools: Emacs, GNU (gcc, gdb, make, autoconf etc.), (D)VCS (git, cvs, subversion), Cross-compilers, ICE’s, scopes and logic analysers

Recent Employment

Half Llama Technology, Cambridge

Half Llama Technology is a consultancy which specialises in helping companies effectively use Open Source software in their products. I have worked on a number of projects including:

• Continuing to support and develope the Network Management System I designed and built for Cambridge Broadband Networks.
• Some development work for the University of Essex Psychology Department.
• Contributing a a number of patches to the Open Source music firmware project Rockbox.

Cambridge Broadband Networks, Cambridge

I am responsible for designing and building a Network Management System for bespoke wireless broadband telecoms systems. The product is a customised distribution of Ubuntu with additional open and proprietary components.

• Configure, adapt and customise OpenNMS for monitoring point to multi-point wireless networks.
• Modifying existing GTK based tools for configuration and setup of the Wireless network environment to work on the NMS platform.
• Combining existing tools with OpenNMS framework and linking together with scripting and web interface.
• Occasional Linux kernel support to the system testing team.

Transitive, Manchester

I was the Product Lead for the development of a SPARC/Solaris to x86/Solaris dynamic binary translator. I previously worked on the development of the SPARC/Solaris to x86_64/Linux translator. Some of the work I have been involved with includes:

• Technical planning and leadership for the products I was responsible for
• Development of new features including leading the work on Precise Exceptions for our SPARC subject translators
• Representing the company at various technical conferences, tracking trends and occasionally delivering presentations
• Code baseline duties including integration, testing and QA activities while rolling project releases
• Mentoring activities including helping fellow engineers solve problems

Braddahead, St Helens

I worked as the principle Software Engineer of a venture capital backed startup developing next generation Digital Video Recorders for the security market. I was responsible for the software architecture as well as a large portion of the in house code base. The product is an embedded Linux system which took advantage of open source software to provide non-DVR functionality. Braddahead completed a successful exit in July 2004 when it was bought by Baxall Ltd.

• Software system design and architecture (in close co-operation with the hardware team)
• Writing boot code to bring up hardware and the Linux Kernel
• Writing kernel drivers for the frame-buffer, IDE, and DMA hardware
• Modifying existing drivers to fix portability issues with networking, SCSI and USB subsystems
• Writing user space drivers for the custom DVR hardware including frame capture, display and compression

Marconi, Liverpool

While I was a team leader I led a variety of embedded line card projects. I was involved in a large number of process improvement activities as well as contributing my engineer experience.

• Project planning and management for both green field and support work
• Preparation of estimates and risk assessments for business review
• Experienced in project maintenance, including prioritising and allocating work
• Experience liaising with groups such as System Design, project management and customers.
• Implemented several automated systems to improve departmental processes (for example using Mantis to track bugs)
• Maintained a number of departmental Linux machines which where used for a variety of activities (for example web portal, version control, and networking tools)

I started in the department supporting the existing Basic Rate ISDN line cards at the tail of the "Home Highway" development and went on to work on further line controller developments.

• Received an Individual Contribution award for my work fixing several high profile field problems
• Implemented several major modules of line card as well leading integration and boot-code/OS

Barcrest Ltd, Ashton-under-Lyne

I worked in a department that produced Video Gaming software for various Casinos and other high stakes markets. My work included included analysis, simulation, implementation and testing of gaming software and ensuring it was compliant with the regulations.

The Technology Partnership, Cambridge

I was taken on a short-term contract to develop an experimental teaching aid for the deaf. During my time there I became involved in a variety of other projects including writing software to drive some prototype industrial hardware.

Education

My final year project was a computer based analysis of Transfer RNA.

Contact and Personal Details

• Name: Alexis James Bennée
• Location: Cambridge, UK
• Availability: Not currently looking
• Postal mail address on request
• Email: alex@bennee.com (preferred)
• Homepage: www.bennee.com/~alex/
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbennee
• Mobile: +44 (0) 793 2733275