My name is Rob. My surname is Dutch. It's spelled Thijssen, but it's pronounced tai-sen.
I automate the dreary and mundane but necessary things; in order to free up time and the mind for all the big, fun, important and exciting things.
I am a motivated software and infrastructure engineering lead specialising in secure, transparent and continuous integration and deployment.
I am a Linux and Microsoft platform expert with extensive provider experience with the Amazon, Azure and Google cloud platforms and their associated tooling.
I have a history of working with large, recognisable, enterprise organisations throughout the world where I am generally appreciated for the work I do, which is honest, valuable and efficient. I am on good terms with previous employers who often invite me back to participate in further work.
I am most productive when working remotely from my dedicated, optimised and private office, where the distractions and frustrations of commuting through and working in a big, busy city are absent.
I am a sustainabilitarian. I believe that universal basic income holds the key to a better future for all of us. I am passionate about: the natural world, enjoying the great outdoors through kayaking, hiking and exploration, professional confidence and solo adventuring (usually on a motorcycle or sailing vessel).
My curriculum vitae follows. Other formats are also available, including: pdf, docx, odt, gdoc, gist.
I am a senior technical architect and development team lead, focussed on continuous integration while coaching, mentoring or leading by example in the use of best practice, while creating maintainable solutions. I specialise in implementing and showing developers and stakeholders how to implement the full spectrum of solutions and methodologies that contribute to a continuously integrated, agile and lean, development process.
To support my work ethic and professional goals:
Building mobile platforms and payment gateways
Initially I was the sole developer for this start-up mobile solutions provider. As the company progressed and grew I undertook responsibility for a team of developers. I managed and contributed to the development of bespoke php applications for delivery of mobile services and the internal management through reports and statistical analysis. I managed the migration of our data services from mysql to oracle rdbms. As a customer-facing and results-oriented business, agile methodology and principles was our natural development environment.
Building eGovernment interfaces and fulfillment processes
Working on Devon's local government e-enablement project, I was responsible for the design, development and maintenance of the reporting infrastructure using crystal reports and oracle data-sources. I maintained and administered the associated business objects servers. Much of the work involved data analysis, writing complex sql queries and providing advice to staff and contractors on the use of crystal reports, writing SQL queries and procedures and the use of client tools including plsql.
Build processes that build jet turbines
My focus at centrax was on the development of the stock requirements, forecasting and management system. The project encompassed the integration of business objects, crystal reports and bespoke php4, php5 and perl web applications with an as400 db2 odbc back-end. I was the lead developer and managed a small team of it personnel. I had responsibility for the technical architecture and design of a number of business applications focussed around erp. The role involved a significant use of complex sql, vb6, object oriented php and c++. As a manufacturing company we worked to customer and business requirements which required a great deal of flexibility and a rolled up sleeves approach to problem solving and customer satisfaction.
Building things
My position at BT was a contract, developing for the 'fastpeter' project. I developed and supported transaction based messaging applications in C#. My team’s focus was on the enabling of simultaneous provision of pstn and adsl for UK customers. We facilitated the provision of broadband to BT customers as well as our wholesale client’s customers and those on the unbundled exchanges (basically, all broadband in the UK). We employed continuous integration, test driven development and agile methodologies in an extreme programming environment utilising ms build, nant, nunit and version one.
As an agile development team we developed in fortnightly iterations which allowed us to focus our efforts on priority business requirements and respond quickly to change and implementation requests. I was responsible for the migration of c++ and vb.net code to c#. This involved a great deal of refactoring and because we ran a test driven environment, I wrote a great deal of nunit test code in c# to ensure that the migration and refactoring resulted in stable, bug free code that met requirements. We also formalised our enterprise integration patterns through the use of a pipes and filters approach to message handling.
Building things
This contract position was for a prestigious .net development house in hampshire. I worked with the company's Continuity application framework and content management system. My responsibilities included creating bespoke software solutions for clients like Motorola, Dean and Dyball and the RNLI. Our principle technologies were asp.net and c# on the .Net 1.1 framework and one of my more interesting projects involved porting the existing continuity code-base to run on the linux and mac mono .Net framework. I also made extensive use of the itextsharp libraries to dynamically generate complex pdf documentation. We also made extensive use of trac and subversion for source control. As Continuity delivers pure xml content, much of my work entailed development of the xsl transformations to xhtml.
Building backend prescription fulfillment systems
This position, for one of the uk’s leading agile software development companies was based in nottingham, developing c# applications on the .Net 2.0 framework within Team System. Our focus was on delivery of mission critical enterprise applications centred on dispensing of drugs and other pharmaceuticals for Boots PLC. We were working within tight deadlines to provide a solution that tied a number of NHS and commercial enterprise solutions together. We developed within an agile/scrum environment with participation from Conchango, Boots, IBM and Microsoft. The project was interesting and unique in that it was one of the first in the uk to implement the .Net 2 framework at its level of complexity with an SQL 2005/ado.net back-end. This was a highly skilled team made up entirely of senior developers who are leaders in their respective fields. Strong focus was placed on thorough implementation of best practices and continuous integration using agile, continuous integration and team system.
Building complex quotation engines and decision trees
My contract with Atos involved development of a flagship quotation solution for Vanco PLC. The project was based on the .Net 2.0 framework. I handled solution design and configuration management in cooperation with the technical architect. My role included ensuring the use of best practice solutions across the functional requirements. I incorporated the Microsoft enterprise library data, transaction, logging and exception libraries using ado.net and an entities based dal. I also introduced the team to continuous integration utilising automated, source control based builds using cruisecontrol.net and MS Build. I was responsible to educate developers and stakeholders on agile principles and to advocate the use of agile methodologies and test driven development within the business.
Eradicating tuberculosis with tracing technology
I designed and implemented an advanced tuberculosis surveillance and reporting solution at the centre for infections. The application monitors disease outbreaks and patient care throughout the United Kingdom. My remit included the system design and architecture as well as developing the infrastructure for builds, releases and testing. I was also involved with negotiations with customers and users around both technical and user requirements as well as analysis and project planning. We delivered reporting software depicting geographical analysis of disease trends utilising GIS and mapping controls. The solution architecture was centred on SQL Server 2005 with dynamic sql reporting services, .Net 2.0 (c#), MSBuild, atlas (ajax), web services and took advantage of the rad / telerik libraries. The user interface contained many web 2.0 features while the middle tier was supported by a wse solution that provided interfaces to the various regional authority databases and reporting systems using ado.net to connect to its own sql server data-store. I was involved with implementing patterns and practices for other projects and promoting agile methodologies within the development departments.
Building things
This brief role entailed delivery of the deployment and staging environments for a high profile, ecommerce website for a well known entertainment artist. The technologies utilised included Microsoft's Team Foundation Server, Commerce Server 2007, sharepoint, biztalk and verified by visa. I was responsible to manage and automate regular deployments through a number of complex, secure environments.
Building ecommerce platforms and integrations
At charteris I filled the roles of technical architect, team lead and senior developer on the associates program. I was responsible for solution design and technical architecture for a number of ecommerce and integration systems and I advocated industry best practice in numerous technical implementations for our clients. I played a key role in the restructuring of the game.co.uk & gamestation.co.uk brands, asp.net websites and the asp.net/wcf-based, white-label platform. The platform included numerous WCF services that enable the disparate warehousing, stock control, content and catalogue management systems of the various companies acquired by game group, to communicate and share information, facilitating a uniform offering across all brands. In 2007, I led a team of 6 developers in the development of a new ecommerce platform and web UI for Game’s checkout and order fulfilment applications. In 2008, I worked in Costa Rica, managing Charteris’ off-shore operation where I recruited and managed a development team of 12 and a testing team of 5. I coordinated budget, logistics and project management of our overseas work and was responsible for the full project lifecycle including liaising with our clients, partners and suppliers.
Working within development to promote best practice in continuous integration and deployment
In reading with visa europe, I worked on geo-tagged, location based, fraud profiling and completed several research and development spearhead projects for reporting and live monitoring of mission critical, high volume, key transaction and authorisation systems. Our software used Arc GIS and Dundas Maps to accurately map fraud in near-real-time and report visual fraud location data. my team led the .net development program making use of cutting edge microsoft technologies including c# 3.5/4.0, mef, wpf, silverlight, asp.net mvc, wcf, visual studio 2010, tfs 2010 and SQL Server 2008. My role included promotion of best of breed practices in scalable enterprise architecture, implementation of agile methodology, continuous integration with ms build & team system as well as providing guidance and demonstration in the use of new c# 4.0/3.5 language constructs and syntax to support interfacing with abinitio and other financial transaction management systems.
Working within development to promote best practice in continuous integration and deployment
Working with Keane Switzerland in Fribourg, to develop sharePoint and Windows Workflow Foundation driven interfaces to large SAP ERP systems for clients including Nestle. My remit again included implementing best practice in the form of continuous integration and agile, test driven development while advising and mentoring our team and clients in c#, .Net programming, architectural, development and framework implementation.
DevOps: automation, build, release and deployment
With RWEST, I managed release and deployment across the risk development teams. My responsibilities included continuous integration advocacy, architecture and implementation. As part of this remit, I championed technologies and tools that contribute to effective working practices. I administered the DVCS (git - atlassian stash, crucible, fisheye) and CI (TeamCity) servers and provided the integrations to Atlassian Jira and Confluence. I developed applications and scripts that assist with the CI process including database snapshotting, promotion and migration strategies and I administered a number of Oracle Exadata servers. I also set up and administered several nuget and Nexus artifact repositories. I contributed to the global risk development effort with peer code reviews, database, c# and asp.net development. Working with a senior project team, we delivered the business' first globally consolidated, risk reporting platform, bringing integrated, centralised views of risk indicators which give analysts up-to-date reports at multiple granular and aggregation levels.
Within devops we maintained a number of aws/ec2 instances to support the CI infrastructure and also ran a migration pilot to move project infrastructure to the Amazon cloud as part of a cost saving initiative. The effort included capability to spin up complete virtual environments as part of an automated deployment.
DevOps: automation, build, release and deployment
I worked as a team lead assisting Maersk Line with a lean, scrum based, knowledge transfer program to offshore devops functions (continuous integration, automation, build & release management, source control, orchestration, virtual environment provisioning, maintenance & monitoring of environments) to UST Global. I led a devops team of build engineers where we took advantage of lean and scrum to share a diverse devops workload across the team.
Leveraging a near-complete open source stack, we utilised, maintained and developed a bespoke, cross-platform, framework (in python) to interact with the full spectrum of ci tools, borrowing from the chef/puppet kitchen model. We automated all interactions with: ssh, git, svn, hudson, maven, ant, nexus, kibana, logstash, cucumber, weblogic, oracle, osb, virtualbox, vagrant and more.
The engagement included an extended stay in bangalore where I assisted in the hiring and training process for the offshore operation. I had the pleasure of engaging and working with a dynamic, talented and motivated new team whilst relaying the mature working practices, lean/agile/scrum and technical approach of the established but departing Copenhagen team.
Working within development to promote best practice in continuous integration & deployment
Supporting development of the flagship Beazley Pro application suite through the introduction of github enterprise as the vcs platform (migrated from perforce), harnessing the benefits of virtualisation through an internal hyper-v cloud with automated, multi-vm, environment creation, streamlining the deployment tooling using chocolatey and nuget as well as building tools to support the validation and auditing of environment configuration amidst rapidly changing deployment scenarios for the microsoft .Net application stack (nservicebus, windows services, wcf, asp.net mvc).
Returning to my roots at IHS, I worked as a software developer working in an agile/scrum environment to implement asp.net web and nservicebus messaging applications in support of the IHS connect risk platform.
Developing securities and collateral management software and workflows
I joined the BIS to implement bespoke applications for the monitoring of incoming collateral and securities data from Bloomberg.
Most of these applications utilize biztalk for the workflow orchestration and fixml entry points and web api (and WCF) to expose business logic and internal endpoints for validation and manipulation of the received data.
The UI implementation consumes a restful web api and renders angular-js mvc views of the state of securities being processed by the workflow.
I joined Mozilla to enhance the Windows platform development and release life-cycle's continuous integration (CI) experience within the open-source arena.
At Mozilla, I enjoyed working extensively on CI architecture, infrastructure, and automation at industry-leading scales. Mozilla continuously built and tested Firefox across Android, Linux, OSX, and Windows platforms, triggered by source code changes and testing requests.
Given the open nature of the source and contributions from volunteers, this translated into an unparalleled scale of CI. We employed purpose-built solutions due to the unique challenges. Noteworthy projects included transitioning the Windows CI build and test infrastructure from in-house virtual and hardware data centers to cloud-based EC2 and GCP infrastructure. With the maturation of cloud infrastructure, we migrated from the legacy buildbot CI to the evolving taskCluster platform. Here, CI tested Firefox across diverse platforms for hundreds of millions of users.
During my time at Mozilla, I created various tools and platforms for orchestration and infrastructure management. These efforts were carried out remotely by engineering and operations teams from diverse cultures and time zones. My toolkit comprised bash, Python, PowerShell, C#, JSON, YAML, SSH, GPG, Go, and Rust.
This experience expanded my knowledge in a niche I was already familiar with, but at an exceptional scale. I had the privilege of collaborating with thought leaders who shaped the industry.
A significant focus was developing interfaces into AWS EC2, creating repeatable, maintainable, scalable, and auditable infrastructure. For instance, I designed an automated pipeline to convert Windows ISO files into EC2 AMIs or GCP images, covering unattended configurations, software orchestration, user account setup, registry settings, and more. This CI-integrated pipeline utilized custom Docker images containing EC2 client tools, enabling testing on new Windows releases.
I participated in developing status dashboards to monitor our infrastructure across various levels. These dashboards helped identify trends early and mitigate issues impacting critical workflows. The implementation included services and web apps leveraging Kubernetes and Docker, and blue/green deployment of CI changes.
Manta reminded me that there are still companies working to make the world a better place and that Engineers can still make a difference.
Manta is an organisation focussed on privacy and sovereign ownership of private data. The world has become a place where private data is bought and sold at will by companies whose interests do not reflect the interests of their users and the owners of the information being exchanged. Manta is building a product which corrects this misdirection for financial transactions on cryptocurrency blockchains. This is an ethos and mission that I care about and I am privileged to be working with the scientific and academic minds capable of bringing about meaningful change in this endeavour.
I am responsible for defining the org’s infrastructure and deployment architecture and manage the Infrastructure Operations team which implements DevSecOps throughout the org.
My role at Manta included:
Providing insights and thought leadership about the organisation application and infrastructure landscape.
My role at Omantel included:
A one year course, completed with distinction. The course included modules from a variety of disciplines, notably, computer science, civil engineering & environmental sciences. It also featured some fairly intense maths and stats.
Completed my studies with honours and received an upper second class bachelor of science. This was a four year sandwich course which meant that I took a year out to complete an industrial placement. The course included a strong programming element in c and c++. My final year project and dissertation was centred on web service technologies and their use in the commercial dissemination of information across the world wide web.
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to publish to google docs:
visit the updated gdoc and download the .pdf, .odt and .docx to the gist repo, commit and push