CV - Theodore Zacharia

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Personal Details:Education:
Name : Theodore Constantine Zacharia
 
Nationality : British
Languages : English and Greek, limited Dutch.
Current Position : Information and Performance Specialist, Ten10		 University College London
BSc(Hons) in Physics
plus 4 A-levels, 10 O-levels.

NOTE:In the following sections the most current items are underlined.

Technical:
Certifications & Clearance.

Platforms, Operating Systems, Interfaces, Controls and Environments.
AWS, UKCloud (previously SkyScape), Kubernetes, Linux (various), UNIX (various including Solaris, HP-UX, SCO, SVR4, AIX & DYNIX/ptx), Windows all versions from 3.1 upwards including server and desktop, MVS (OS/370), DOS, X-Windows, CICS, IMS DB/DC, JCL, CORBA2, Various LANs, WANs, VANs and Multi-tier client/server environments.

Languages and Databases.
SQL, Perl, Python, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML and CSS, C, Groovy, C++, Visual C++, VisualBasic, Forté, PowerBuilder, COBOL, Pascal, ALC & Assembler (various), Unix Shell Script (various ksh, bash, sh), DOS Batch language, PowerShell, REXX, OMGs IDL (ObjectBroker and ORBIX implementations, CORBA V2.0), Oracle (7.x, 8.x, 9.x, 10.x), PL/SQL for Oracle, Sybase, ESQL/C for Sybase, Informix, ESQL/C and I4GL for Informix. MySQL, DL/1 under IMS and CICS. FMLI (Form and Menu Language Interpreter)

Professional:
Tools-Applications.
Atlassian Toolset such as Confluence and Jira , JMeter, IntelliJ IDEA, BusinessObjects Enterprise and Data Integrator (BODI), LoadRunner, Hyperformix, Borland JBuilder, VisualStudio for Windows, MFC for Windows (Visual C++ programming), SDK for Windows (C programming), ESQL/C for Informix. DBLib for Sybase, Holos6 Data Warehousing tools, Designer/2000 and Developer/2000 for Oracle IEF Composer, TSO, ISPF, CHAMP, SIMPC, IBM DFS* utilities for DLI databases BMC secondary index utilities for IMS databases Neuron Data libraries for portable GUI applications (C based code) Windows DDE, OLE etc.

Business-Customer.
Customer consultations, briefings, presentations and demos. Business design, applications design, quality acceptance. Technical support for team interviews (selecting prospective personnel).

Employment History - Project Experience:
Over 34 years in the professional IT industry consisting of:

Over 26 years in HP/EDS and 8 years in Ten10

Performance Engineering.
Over 13 years of performance engineering ... TBC ...

Architecture and Design.
Over 8 years of architecture and design work overlapping to some extent with development and performance work.

Development.
PCs and UNIX machines, coding in Unix shell script (various including Bourne[sh], Korn[ksh] and Bourne-Again[bash]), C, Java, Perl, HTML and JavaScript.

12 years development of Graphical User Interface (GUI) and character based applications. Coding mostly in C++, C++ with MFC, C, C with SDK, VisualBasic, PL/SQL, PowerBuilder and PASCAL, Perl and shell scripts. Multi-platform environment, porting application from DOS/Windows to UNIX/X-Windows. Usually large multi-national systems. Experienced in SQL DBMS and multi-tier client/server environments.

IBM Mainframes OS\370 Overview.
3 years development, maintenance and support of mainframe systems. Experienced in programming in COBOL with DL/1, IMS, CICS and other extensions. TSO development environment with JCL and various schedulers etc for control and running of system. Experienced in IMS DBMS, both Batch and Online environments (DB, DC & BMP).

Major Ten10 Projects (reverse chronological):

BICS Technology Portfolio, HomeOffice, UK (Sept 14..Present)   
Lead Consultant, Performance Team
Six years as Performance Test Lead on the Borders, Immigration and Citizenship System (BICS) Technology Portfolio (aka Migration and Borders Technology Portfolio (MBTP) Portfolio, formerly Immigration Platform Technologies (IPT) Programme) working as part of the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Quality Assurance Testing team (formerly Technical Design Consultancy Services, TDCS), responsible to liaise with all the development, test and architecture teams and ensure we fully identified performance requirements, created plans, developed, executed and analysed tests. I designed most of the early test infrastructure and created many scripts both for test execution and test support, using tools such as Wireshark and Fiddler (better for encrypted sites) to capture client/server interactions.

The HomeOffice was a keen user of opensource products, and we worked mostly in JMeter, but also with some Gatling and later NeoLoad and in addition we used Java and various scripting such as Python and shell to support our testing. Test execution was controlled through Jenkins with Pipelines and with Taurus adding extensive control and reporting capabilities.

Our main tool for performance analysis was Dynatrace (initially for 3 years AppDynamics) along with Sysdig, Kibana and Zabbix for monitoring. We migrated from UKCloud (then SkyScape) to AWS, this coupled with adoption of Kubernetes and Docker for Container and job management resulted in a steep learning curve but the team excelled and IPT won an industry award for Best Use of Cloud Services. A highly agile project we used Jira and Confluence for ticket and document management, with Slack (moved from Skype) as our primary communication tool as the teams were located at a number of sites.

The real challenge was the rate of business change, and especially after the 23rd June 2016 referendum whereby the UK would exit from the EU, the EUExit project was started and along with decommissioning many older systems to be replaced by newer web based system, the level of business change resulted in large changes and short delivery schedules and a very high workload for all teams.

Major HP/EDS Projects (reverse chronological):

C-NOMIS Account, Ministry of Justice, UK (May 10..July 14)   
Technical Team Lead, Performance Engineering
I was offered my previous role in the Central Architecture Team (CAT) but decided to take on a more challenging role as part of the Performance Management/Engineering Team where I would have a greater impact on the quality of the delivery. I worked with the customer in identifying critical business and related peak hour operations, with the CTO of architectural issues, gained in-depth experience with tools such as LoadRunner and SiteScope to performance map the system and carried out predictive performance modeling to estimate loads and required fixes to systems and scale hardware levels to support operations. Using tools such as LoadRunner and SiteScope to performance map the system and scripting (including UNIX shell script, SQL & PL/SQL) to drive and monitor performance tests. Carried out predictive modeling and performance monitoring to estimate loads, identify enhancement and monitor SLAs to support operations using such tools as Hyperformix, CAST and Compuware Vantage Agentless toolset.

One task of particular interest was to performance evaluate a new subsystem (for OASys, a Probation service system) based around TIBCO message queues. Due to a lack of availability of funding from the MoJ we could not purchase the appropriate LoadRunner protocols to carry out the testing using this toolset, so I had to write a bespoke harness in Unix shell scripts to both create message data and drive the message process, and also as capture the results and timings of messages as they were processed.

For non-functional, especially performance testing, data must be of the correct volume, complexity and cardinality as well containing as realistic historical entries to provide realistic data profile and thus a representative response from the system under test. Given the complexity and size of the live data, replicating it would be nearly impossible, therefore using the data, once it had been made anonymous was the only realistic option. We investigated a number of options, some simply could not handle the requirements, others were too expensive, so in the end I developed a scrambling toolkit to meet out requirements. This was developed in Unix shell script, Perl, SQL, PL/SQL and used Unix tools such as awk to provide rich features and high speed. We successfully gained MoJ accreditation after four months of effort for our scrambled DB, the first team ever to do so (others had tried and failed at various stages). And after running this successfully a number of times (to refresh our data) we were asked by Probation to do the same with their database. We achieved this in just two months. The toolset is capable of scrambling any Oracle RDBMS and includes a data analysis phase capable of multiple round trips between the DB and the analyst, generating the code required to scramble the DB as primary output. This code was based on a personal project I had started as an investigation into Oracle, the latest code base remains with me.

We spent sometime at the Sun Microsystems site at Linlithgow, Scotland, executing our first round of performance testing on the newly released system. Though we spent most of the time in the server testing suite, we had opportunities at night and during longer tests to wonder around the immediate area, which was beautiful. Linlithgow Palace was a short walk away, and was the birth place of Mary Queen of Scots.

It was very cold while we were up there, we did find this TARDIS on the Royal Mile but couldn't get it to take us anywhere warmer.


We also did some work.

C-NOMIS Account, Ministry of Justice, UK (Sep 08..May 10)   
Technical Team Lead, LIDS to NOMIS Data Migration
I was the Technical lead of data migration team, responsible for technical aspects of solution to migrate all 133 public sector establishments (Prisons) from the existing LIDS system onto C-NOMIS with a modern infrastructure. Designing and assisting in coding the data migration process, mostly in Unix shell script, SQL, PL/SQL, BusinessObjects Enterprise BODI toolset (BusinessObjects Data Integrator). Coding included creation of user menus, process control, report and document creation (automated generation of .html reports for customers and interfaces team). Attending weekly weekend migrations as technical support and liaison between HP and 3rd parties.

We successfully migrated all 133 public sector Prison Establishments in the 12 month transition period with 100% success, with over 80,000 active offenders, all historical data and billions of rows (RDBMS) of data. The customer was in equal measures, impressed and surprised.

The Data Migration Team on the final establishments being completed, EDS (though by then we were HP EDS) Stockley Park

DII(F) Account, Atlas Consortium, Ministry of Defence, UK (Nov 07..Aug 08)   
Lead Engineer, Applications Hosting Team
Ten months working on the Defence Information Initiative (Future) as the lead engineering for the Applications Hosting team. I lead applications hosting team in technical architecture & design, was responsible for the production of the teams designs and produced the Apps Hosting HLD which passed JRM and was approved by the MoD. I worked with the CTO on architectural issues and business development on bids. I regularly liaised with other DII groups, MoD customer, partners, product suppliers and 3rd parties. I was SC & CTC cleared to work on this project.

After achieving approval for the HLD and with my wife and I expecting our first born, I decide the near 120 mile daily round trip to Reading was too difficult to sustain long term and thus decided to move to a more local account, fortunately by this time the Justice account had started back up again (new fiscal year), so I returned there as it was based in Westminster, London.

C-NOMIS Account, Ministry of Justice, UK (Jul 07..Nov 07)   
Central Architecture Team
Four months working on the Computerised-National Offender Management Information System (C-NOMIS). I was part of the Central Architecture Team (CAT) and was responsible for several architectural reviews, high level designs and a number of technical solution notes including designs for securing issues with single sign on, and providing external organisations access to the system e.g. Serious Organised Crimes Agency (SOCA). Unfortunately a reduction in government funding suspended this project until further notice. I was BC(e) cleared to work on this project.

Verizon (formerly MCI) BP&D Account, UK (Aug 04..Jul 07)   
Lead Technical Development
Three years working on the MCI Billing Printing and Dispatch (BP&D) account. The business and some of the team were based in Reading, others were based in Washington and I occasionally worked with the UK East Lead Technologist (Paul Firm) based in Wavendon. I worked mostly from home, going into Reading and Wavendon for major customer or team meetings. I was solely responsible for the user front end application (Caxton) which was a JSP/Java/Oracle and worked with a team on the backend applications written mainly in Perl,PL/SQL and Unix shell scripts. I was the lead for the majority of the BP&D invoice import and processing applications working with the rendering and printing teams in Washington. I made a number of major enhancements to the system as well as adding new customer data flows, all of which were well received by the customer and delivered on time, cost and to spec (or better). As part of the team I also provided out-of-hours application support for system maintenance. I lead the application and assisted the system and DBA team as part of a major migration of our system from an RS-6000/AIX4.3 platform to a Sun/Solaris platform and from Oracle 8.1.7 to 10.2g (moving Papyrus to 10g meant core table changes). When Verizon bought MCI they decided to take all development and bill processing in-house, EDS decided not to continue to support just the printing of the invoice so I lead the team to transition the BP&D and Caxton services to Verizon and acted as lead architect on the Verizon side in the transition of BP&D to RR Donnelley working closely with their architecture, design and lead technicians.

EMEA Architects Practice (Aug 02..Aug 04)        
Applications Architect
Two years working in the EMEA Architects Practice. I took on the role of an applications architect and provided support to other architects, account teams, delivery teams and solution centres.

I worked with a variety of customers on a variety of projects and in various roles, for example:

Me in the building we were working in, at the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Seattle. Typical EDS, we were there late (note it is dark outside) so no one there to stop us from taking the photo.

MS Office, the building type that is to say.

All the above was great experience which I thoroughly enjoyed, plus I got married during this period so my travel arrangements had to change, thus I joined the MCI account.

GME Automotive Delivery Solution Centre, UK (Sep 99..Jul 02)   
Technical lead and developer
2 ¾ years working on E-Commerce applications, technical lead and developer for both internal and customer facing web based applications.

Major Projects included:

GMAC Project 1500/GS Business Process Re-engineering, UK (Aug 95..Sep 99)   
Technical Consultant
3 ½ years working on the major Business Process Re-engineering carried out by General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC, a.k.a Opel Bank, a.k.a Vauxhall Finance). As a lead member of the P1500 Laboratory (an R&D group), I provided technical consultancy for the development team and lead other teams in various detailed product evaluations including: selection of the development toolset (Forté vs Oracle/2000 vs IEF Composer); selection of Report writers (BusinessObjects vs OracleReports vs JetForm). I also defined technical direction on many issues including technical infrastructure, multi-tier client-server design, the use of ORBs and many other technologies. I took the lead role in several teams carrying out investigations, design and code audits of 3rd party vendor software solutions for GMAC, and proof-of-concepts. I also developed with the following tools: VisualBasic, C, C++ with Sybase Open Client db & ct libraries, Oracle PL/SQL, Forté, Oracle/2000 toolset, BusinessObjects.

Additionally, bespoke projects development work for GMAC Global Solutions included:

Technical team lead and developer for Finance and Insurance Management System (FIMS) written for Vauxhall Finance/Opel Bank using VisualBasic 5.0 Enterprise and Access 7.0. This was a multi-national development team (US, UK, Germany and Egypt) developing the system within 6 months and deploying on a phased approach to firstly the UK and Germany, and later across Europe. I was also lead on the FIMS EMU team which created a proposal for adding EMU support to FIMS. The proposal was accepted but no funds were available to run the project.

I was the project leader and lead developer for the Core Data Maintenance Facility (CDMP) which supports the International Retailer Showroom Systems (IRSS a.k.a Response) product, written for Vauxhall Finance/Opel Bank using VisualC++ with MFC, VisualBasic 5.0 Enterprise, Access 7.0 and Sybase (10 for SCO, 11 for NT). I lead the project from start to finish, being involved from the beginning with the business requirements gathering, business proposal, service agreement creation and project planning, through technical design, coding and implementation and to testing and release to market. This was a multi-national development team (UK, Belgium and Germany) developing the system within 4 months and deploying on a phased approach to firstly Germany and the UK, and later further across Europe.

Additionally, I am working on replacing a Minitel based system in France with an Internet based system (an extranet for GMAC). The current Minitel system, Axone, allows GMAC operations staff in the branches to pay off wholesale loans on sold vehicles, the new system replaces the Minitel with a browser front end, Forté WebServer middle tier calling COBOL business objects wrapped by Forté service objects on the application server. I have been assisting with the network architecture, setting up the server, setting standards and co-ordinating the multinational teams.

We needed to recruit a large number of C programmers for a specific GM project, a 3rd party company was selected to assist in the selection process by screening prospecting coders by testing them in a 50 minute, 60 question multiple choice exam. To ascertain if the exam would be accurate EDS sent three existing people of its own to sit the exam: a new higher direct university graduate (as the lower tier), a former contractor and experienced coder (as the middle tier control) and myself (as the upper bound control). To prevent external groups from identifying us we were given code names of Dopey, Grumpy and Doc (myself). The exam did prove itself as the new graduate who had used C at University achieved a score of 30%, the former contractor achieved 68% and I achieved 98%. It's just a shame there was no certification at the end of this as it was a tough exam!

Mortgage Origination and Securitisation System for BACOB Bank, Belgium (May 93..Aug 95)   
Technical Lead and Lead Developer
2 ¼ years working on the Loan Origination and Securitisation project for the Belgium bank BACOB. Analysis, Design and Implementation of PC Windows and UNIX Interface subsystems. I coded in PowerBuilder (for the GUI interface - FrontOffice application), Microsoft C++ and C with SDK (for the interface objects and communications DLLs on PC). C and I4GL, ESQL/C (Informix) and UNIX Shell Scripts (korn shell) for the batch cycle on a UNIX box (BackOffice applications). 5 months of this project was spent working in the USA (Plano - Texas).

On the PC I took a lead role in the design of the system and also coded interactive windows for credit scoring and the background communication processes. I also lead the batch cycle development team, and on the UNIX box set project standards, coded interface and communications programs, and an entire batch entry/control subsystem with interactive screens to enable operators to run, monitor, restart etc, the batch system. This project was ISO 9000/9001 certified.

DCS2-Windows, Belgium (Aug 91..May 93)   
Senior Analyst/Developer
1 ¾ years working on DCS2-Windows (GMC - General Motors Continental) project analysing, designing and developing GUI applications. My main area of responsibility was the development of the Vehicle Ordering system and Marketing Offer Specification system. All work carried out was in C with Neuron Data portable system libraries, project was XPG3 and POSIX compliant.

Field Force Communication System, Belgium (FFCS) (Aug 90..Aug 91)   
Analyst/Developer
1 year working for FFCS analysing, designing and developing GUI applications which allowed users to display and manipulate data in a user friendly form. This data was downloaded from host applications to the users PC where Windows applications written by FFCS (my team, in C) would display this data. I developed many housekeeping and communications functions as well as assisting in the main spreadsheet construction and solely developing a graphics server (as a DLL using DDE, this was pre-OLE and pre-COM, let alone .Net) for FFCS which could display any data in various forms including 2D/3D, Bar, Chart, Line and Pie graphs. Also as part of this project, GM required to be able to save data in Microsoft Excel format, at the time Microsoft had not published the internals of their file format so I had to reverse engineer it by systematically making changes and noting the differences in the binary file. I found it used a sparse cell technology, it took over a month but I decoded the BIFF3 format. This project was delivered on time, within budget and to specification.

Lived in Antwerp for over 5 years, lovely place, got to travel across Europe so much as I could just get in my car and drive anywhere. Here is Atlantic House, Noorderlaan 147, where EDS Antwerp were based, I spent many happy days (and nights) working here.

Dealer Communication System (DCS) Router Development and Support, UK (Jan 88..Jul 90)   
Analyst/Developer
2 ½ years working for DCS in the UK developing, maintaining and supporting the DCS Router system which controls a flow of data between GM Dealerships and GM applications in a multi- national environment. This was a PC based system at the user end and an IBM mainframe based system at the host end. The last 6 months were spent working in Belgium doing among other things co-ordinating and implementing (successfully) a major multi-site database change that affected multiple systems.

NL Baroid, UK (Oct 87..Dec 87)
Mud Logger
Based in Aberdeen, one hitch working as a Mud Logger on the Glomar Arctic 1, a semi-submersible exploration rig. A hitch consisted of 2 weeks offshore, working nights the first week and days the second.

Here a relief helicopter lands bringing a crew change which happened every week as there was a set of two crews compliment on-board, one set working nights, one set working days.

Royal Air Force, UK (Jan 86..Sep 87)
Officer, Engineering
Flying Officer, Engineering Branch, Royal Air Force, United Kingdom. RAF College Cranwell, 93 IOTC. Attended a number of RAF bases in UK but the end of the Cold War brought an unexpected quick exit to many crew.

And before I forget, Marconi Space Systems, I was offered and accepted a job at their Southampton facility but just before joining I attended and passed Officer and Aircrew Selection at RAF Biggin Hill so I decided to join the Royal Air Force instead.

Formal Training (reverse chronological):

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