Personal details

Name
Robert Atkins
Email Address
ratkins@fastmail. fm
Mobile Phone
+1 (702) 354-6240
Address
Stanley St, Darlinghurst, Sydney

Education

Career Highlights

Work History

January 2005—June 2009: Tyro (formerly MoneySwitch)

Employed by Tyro (then MoneySwitch) to join their startup banking business and help build the first genuinely new player in the Australian merchant acquiring business in more than a decade. Tyro is a top-tier member of BECS (the Bulk Electronic Clearing System), CECS (the Consumer Electronic Clearing System) as well as a member of the Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners and JCB card schemes.

This position involved developing software to settle via BECS and CECS and the national Exchange Settlement System, building a back-office clearing and reconciliation system and implementing AS2805 and ISO8583 standards (and variants) to switch financial messages to the card schemes. I was also closely involved in developing the software which runs on the terminal including its user interface and interaction design.

Technologies in use at Tyro include Java 1.3 and Java 6, the Spring and PicoContainer IOC frameworks, the Spring MVC web framework, Hibernate, Prevayler and Linux.

More important to the productivity of the team than particular technologies are the Agile development practices used at Tyro. These include pair programming, test-first development, time-boxed iterations, acceptance testing, simple code, "YAGNI" and a dedication to continuous improvement. I was closely involved in the instigation and upkeep of Agile practices at Tyro.

May 2004—September 2004: EB2 International

Contracted by EB2 International to work with their Sydney based development team delivering enhancements and bug fixes for EB2's online flight booking engine, QuickTrip. Mainly concerned with adding the 3D Secure ("Verified by Visa") feature to the Java payment gateway module, the role also included working with the Bullant application server / persistent object database.

This project involved significant refactoring of the existing codebase, resulting in cleaner design and fewer lines of code, even with the extra features. A comprehensive suite of JUnit tests were developed in conjunction with the enhancements.

December 2002—April 2004: XM

Contracted by XM to work with their client to redevelop their eCommerce websites. Technologies used included ATG Dynamo 6.0, Java 1.3.1, JSP, Java servlets, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft IIS. Tasks included integrating a third party search package and writing code to parse XML with the DOM. Dynamo modules used included DAS, DCS (shopping cart and checkout process customisations), DPS (extensive promotions subsystem customisations) and DSS.

During this placement it was recognised there was room for improvement of the development process used by the team, and I made efforts to introduce a number of Agile/Extreme Programming practices. These included an automated build system based on Apache Ant, continuous integration in the form of automated nightly builds, coding standards enforced by a tool (Checkstyle) as part of the build process, daily stand-up meetings and an effort to practise simple design and refactoring.

May 2002—August 2002: Energy Australia

Contracted to work this 24-hour operations support position, monitoring the health of a business-critical EA system. Implemented various scripts to make the data collection, report generation and monitoring processes more efficient and accurate.

April 2000—January 2001: Icon Medialab London

Contracted to work on the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) account for this top-4 European web consultancy.

Contributed Unix and TCP/IP networking skills by assisting in configuration and maintenance of large SCEE web servers (serving upwards of 100 virtual hosts) running Apache and Netscape iPlanet.

Designed and developed a custom bulletin board system for the SCEE Playstation 2 website. Environment included J2EE 1.2, IBM's Visual Age for Java, Rational Rose, the CVS version control system, Oracle 8i database and the ATG Dynamo application server (version 4.5), including work with DAS and DPS modules.

January 1997—March 2000: OSIX Pty Ltd, Sydney

Successfully competed for one of four graduate positions at OSIX, a leading Australian IT infrastructure integrator, specialising in AIX.

This multi-faceted role involved design, installation, configuration, maintenance, troubleshooting and IT infrastructure management of IBM RS/6000 systems and the AIX operating system. Role demanded excellent technical skills, interpersonal skills with clients and the ability to think laterally and quickly in solving highly time-critical problems. All facets of systems management covered including storage management, backups, disaster recovery, performance tuning, system documentation, scripting and user training.

As well as contract placements for blue chip clients including Energy Australia, Bank Nationale de Paris, GIO, NRMA, Recall/Intershred and IBM GSA, a significant part of this role involved delivering training to customers on behalf of IBM all over Australia, achieving consistently high appraisals from students. I also developed course materials on behalf of OSIX.

Career aspirations

I enjoy the craft of programming. I want to learn how to perform it better and I want to deliver working, valuable software and enjoy doing so. I believe that Agile programming techniques such as test-first, pair programming, continuous integration and simple design best support this. More importantly, my personal experience leads me to believe Agile's focus on people and interactions over processes and tools is ultimately a better way to get work done.

Hobbies and interests

I enjoy travel, having made a major trip through Asia, the Middle East and Eastern and Central Europe in 2001-2002 in addition to smaller trips across the USA in 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The focus of the last three USA trips was the Burning Man arts festival and I am involved with the Australian burner community in the organisation of a regional event. I also enjoy swimming, SCUBA diving, rock clibming, live music, clubbing, collecting CDs, Apple Macintoshes, writing and reading.