Benjamin Zanin - Resumé

Summary

Ben Zanin is a problem solver. He has broad technical experience with low-level operating system and hardware tuning and a strong data analysis and reporting skill set with SQL and custom one-off tools. He has performed enterprise class application management across multiple instances, operating systems and data centers. Ben is careful, methodical and thorough; absorbs information swiftly and accurately; and places a high priority on transferring expertise to coworkers and teammates.

Skills Profile

Application Dev Tools	Falcon request- and incident-tracking database, JIRA problem- and change-request tracking database, Embarcadero DB Artisan SQL IDE, vi + GNU make and associated version control and toolchain
Application Packages	HP OpenView Service Center ITIL/ITSM Application Suite, Hummingbird Exceed, Firefox/Mozilla, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl), CA Unicenter Autosys, IBM Websphere MQ-Series, PuTTY / SSH, Greasemonkey, Remedy
Databases / DB Tools	Sybase, Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL, SQLite, Natural ADABAS; isql, fsql, DB Artisan, CSV processing, XML/SOAP
Desktop Tools	MS Office (Outlook, Excel, Word, Visio, Powerpoint, Access), Embarcadero DB Artisan, Hummingbird Exceed and Host Explorer tools, Outwit, Cygwin, XFree86, GNU screen
Hardware	Intel/AMD x86-32 / x86-64, PowerPC, Sun SPARC, ARM, XSCale; QIC; DOCSIS 1.x through 3.0
Methods and Techniques	ITIL, Waterfall, business continuity planning
Network and Comms	Apache httpd, Apache Tomcat, New Atlanta ServletExec, MS IIS, MS Outlook, MS Exchange, MS Sharepoint / WebDAV, Placeware, RDP, JAM Communicator (Jabber / XMPP), MS Live Communicator, Avaya VoIP Softphone, Cisco PIX; OpenSSH, rsync; TCP/IP, UDP, ICMP, DHCP autoconfiguration, DNS, IMAP, SMTP (RFC822, RFC2822.), HTTP, SSH, SSL; IRC; Ethernet 802.3, 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth (versions 1 through 2.1), ISDN
Operating Systems	Linux kernels 2.2 through 2.6 (Redhat-, Debian- and Busybox-based distributions); Solaris 5.8, 8; Aurora compatibility layer; apt suite; RPM/Yum; MacOS v8.6 through X (Leopard); Windows 95, 98, NT 3.x, NT 4.x, 2000, XP, Vista
Programming Languages	Shell programming (ksh, bash/dash/ash/sh), sed, awk, Lua (4.x and 5.x series), Scheme (R4RS, R5RS, ERR5RS / R6RS), Lisp (CL and variants: Hedgehog Lisp, XSLisp, TinyScheme.) JavaScript / ECMA-262 (+ DOM 1, 2, 3, E4X and related extensions), Perl (5.6, 5.8), Forth; bc, dc, XPath, SQL, PHP; XSLT, Visual Basic, Jscript, VBScript, CGI
Utilities / Tools	GNU coreutils and fileutils, standard Solaris utilities, autosys, vi/vim, xmlstarlet, Windows Scripting Host, MS Systems Management Server (SMS)

Professional Experience

Morgan Stanley with Keane, Inc.

Financial Services (Prime Brokerage) / IT Consulting

2006-09 - 2008-06

Level 2 Business Application Analyst (MS) / Senior Consultant (Keane)

Consultants on the Client Straight-Through Processing / Custody Level 2 team provide live trade troubleshooting and resolution for the entire trade life cycle. I was responsible for all IT liaison services to the business and are subject matter experts on all steps of the process: trade entry, breaks, correction, clearance, reporting and more.

Investigated exceptions in the trade entry flow daily, and at all levels in the application tree. Read through Apache / Tomcat web logs and ServletExec / application logs to reconstruct user actions. Verified data sent to, present in, and pulled from Sybase databases running on dedicated Solaris hardware. Tracked the steps of the enrichment process as trades were transmitted from Unix to a Natural ADABAS mainframe back-end. Ensured that mainframe processing was pulling data from the correct tables and transferring data back to the Unix side in the expected format. Actively monitored the Windows-based trade breaks report generation and the Unix-based report distribution processes.
Routinely performed crisis command and control during outages with major client impact and severe firm financial risk. Coordinated client notification. Escalated to resolution teams and business stakeholders. Logged and documented resolution steps to speed resolution and help prevent reoccurrences.
Performed dozens of investigations to determine the source of recurring problems. From the investigations synthesized techniques, tools and documentation to allow team members to rapidly deal with future instances of the problem. Prioritized these problems and escalated them to development in order to reduce client impact.
Researched, designed, documented and implemented a procedure for monitoring what the client called "the most important thing we do": trade breaks report distribution. Trained teammates and coworkers on other teams to follow the process. Successfully handed off responsibility to an offshore team which has been handling it correctly ever since. The process was designed to efficiently maintain a data archive. I drew upon this archive regularly to produce ad hoc reports that visualized megabytes of bulk data on throughput, latency and capacity. These reports revealed many problems and allowed them to be addressed and resolved. They also allowed several issues which otherwise might have affected service level agreements to be resolved before becoming incidents.
Created and documented a tool to maintain a centralized archive of logs produced by many instances of a trade entry application, spread across many physical hosts. This archive facilitated and sped troubleshooting and trending and helped bring the client into compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOx) data retention requirements.

Environment

Aurora layer atop Windows XP, Red Hat, RHEL Linux derivatives, Sun Solaris; Apache, Tomcat, ServletExec front end; Sybase SQL layer; IBM MQ-Series XML/SOAP message passing; Unix shell, Perl system probes; Natural ADABAS mainframe back-end; Windows report generation; HP OpenView / Falcon / JIRA request-, problem- and change-tracking systems; CA Unicenter autosys

MekTek Solutions

Web Design, Business Analysis

2004-09 - 2005-11

Consultant

As a consultant for MekTek Solutions I built websites, programmed tools, debugged software and processes, assembled hardware, created and documented business and technical procedures alone and as part of a small team.

Analyzed a process for updating an inventory and availability system with the goal of decreasing the time, effort and potential for error. Abstracted the workflow, inputs and desired outputs into a functional document for client review. Created a workflow with supporting tools that accelerated the process by several orders of magnitude and removed all of the sources of common errors.
Migrated a client from an Outlook-based mailing list solution to one developed from scratch, informed by guidelines and requirements rather than the operational model of the legacy system. This let the new system inherit all of the workflow while providing a much stronger data model and distribution back end. This migration dramatically reduced false positives and duplicate subscribers while fortifying it against future duplicate entries. It also significantly mitigated the risk of exposing subscriber lists, and it secured the distribution system against exploitation by unauthorized senders.

Environment

Windows 2000, XP; Linux (Debian (and Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, tomsrtbt, and derivatives), Red Hat); Windows Scripting Host + VBScript, Jscript, Outwit tool suite; GNU coreutils and fileutils (including versions recompiled for Win32); HTML/XML, CSS, XSLT, JavaScript

NAFTA Secretariat

International Trade Law / System and Software Support

2003-08 - 2004-09

IT Administrator

At the NAFTA Secretariat I provided support for a small team of international trade lawyers. I helped implement necessities such as PWGSC-mandated X.509 certificates for secure emailing between government agencies, a multi-tiered backup strategy (local, network, tape, offsite), data format conversion for compliance with government web accessibility standards, and procedure documentation. The agency offered the interesting challenge of implementing critical infrastructure within tight constraints of budget and time.

Helped author, review and audit a business continuity plan to guarantee continued operations in the event of a simultaneous and complete facilities and utilities failure.
Created, documented and tested a data replication solution which backed up and archived email and document repositories across the entire network via encrypted tunnel to an off-site, secure facility. The solution leveraged open source and zero-cost tools and existing infrastructure to provide the necessary functionality without placing any additional strain on the department budget.
Built a suite of tools to manage the two separate and sizeable libraries of books and legal documents stored on site. The previous system for managing the book library was a custom-coded product which relied on a single local database file and lacked structured and unstructured query tools. I addressed and resolved both weaknesses. The document library included several hundred thousand pages that were scanned and OCR.d into an XML database by an external firm. I acted as a liaison and business analyst by communicating strategic guidance to the firm and by explaining the ramifications of technical trade-offs to management.

Environment

Windows 98, 2000, XP; MS Exchange email infrastructure; QIC tape backup system with daily off-site cartridge rotation; Cisco PIX firewall; Apache and MS IIS httpds running concurrently; rsync + gzip/bzip2/lzo/pkzip + ssh for online offsite replication; WSH, Jscript, VBScript, xmlstarlet, and the Outwit tool suite for extracting data from legacy systems and formats

Convergys

Inbound Call Center / ISP Incident Resolution

2002-11 - 2003-08

Customer Service Representative

Convergys, formerly Taima, provided outsourced technical support to several national broadband ISPs. I worked on the Road Runner contract and provided technical support for every aspect of connectivity between the wall socket and the chair. This position required superb verbal communication and interpersonal skills and strong, rapid troubleshooting. Convergys required resolutions within tight timeframes and strict responsibility guidelines.

Wrote a web-based tool for dealing in real time with an iterative problem discovery system. The tool allowed a CSR to minimize time spent typing and maximize time spent listening to the customer. This made it easier to discover and deal with the root cause of the problem.
Condensed, regularized, fact-checked and expanded on large portions of the internal troubleshooting documentation. Streamlined the fact-finding process and sped the average investigation by using simpler, quicker steps that revealed more information and avoided common communications problems. Changed conversational paths to ones which led to speedy resolution rather than confrontation by carefully considering the aspects of Windows, MacOS and underlying hardware configuration that agents were allowed and forbidden to address.

Environment

Remedy issue-tracking database; internal web-based troubleshooting documentation system; VoIP-based call routing system; Windows 95 through XP; MacOS v8.6 through X; DOCSIS-compliant cable modems

Statistics Canada

Federal Statistics Agency / System and Software Support

2000-06 - 2002-09

IT Administrator

At Statistics Canada I worked with a small team to test software updates, create distribution packages, and monitor progressive distribution to carefully scheduled office divisions for success and failures. Duties also included backing out problematic packages to ensure the uninterrupted availability of servers, desktop machines and network infrastructure. IT was tasked with increasing the accuracy of the reporting tools used for monitoring failure rates of remote installations and for the billing of internally developed software packages. One major challenge was accounting for the wide variety of deployed hardware and software configurations. The other was making best use of a network spanning gigabit fiber-optic links inside buildings, 100BaseT inter-building links, and inter-campus dual ISDN links.

Created a data analysis package which revealed, explained and quantified inconsistencies in reports produced by the solution used for internal software billing and auditing. With the aid of this package and several months of historical data, created a report which revealed a large and increasing standard deviation, and highlighted and explained the underlying technical reasons for these results. This allowed management to more accurately interpret the information produced by the tool and provided the opportunity for process improvement.

Environment

Windows 95, 98, NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000; mainframe back-end; tape-based data silos; ISDN, optical and twisted-pair networking; MS Systems Management Server; MS Access and Oracle database analysis

Education

Three years in Honours Mathematics

University of Ottawa

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

One and a half years in Computer Science

Carleton University

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada