My Work Experience

If you so desire you can contact me at arjen at wiersma.org

What I look for in a job

I like working on projects that have a high standard for quality and that require a special focus on performance and scalability.

As an enterprise engineer I am highly skilled in everything related to programming, like Object Orientated Design and most of the modern relevant technologies. As a professional I keep up to date with the latest industry developments.

My experience with programming languages is as follows:

Java - 8+ years: I have done an awful lot with the Java language; from data processing (ETL) all the way to complex multi-threaded applications back to JPA based WebServices (JAX-WS). I actually like the language and the tooling it provides to its developers.
C++ - 4+ years: I get to do least amount of actual work in this beautiful language, but I admire it most. The boost library is part of my standard toolkit as well as the autotools.
Perl - 8+ years: While doing very complex work-flows and ETL processes I found Perl to be a good friend to have around.
Internet technologies: I know how to use most of the standards defined by the W3C (and other standards bodies) when it comes to browser based applications, I tend to stay away from them however since my computing interests are not targeted towards browsers and my design skills are poor. The server side protocols (SMTP, IMAP, XMPP) I cherish and have implemented some of them myself in the last couple of years.

I also participate in several open source applications.

What I have done up to now

The following is my relevant work history which I have accumulated in the last 10 years.

eBuddy

Senior Architect

Started: September 2006 | Ended: not yet | URL: http://www.ebuddy.com

eBuddy was the first and is the best online Instant Messenger aggregation service. This means that it allows users of various IM services (such as MSN, Yahoo, AIM and Google Talk) to use those services through a Web Application.

As a Senior Architect I am responsible for the different components that make up the software infrastructure for the chat service as well as the hardware infrastructure.

The main focus is on high performance (speed and memory), high availability and Reverse engineering of protocols.

Skills used: Java and all the usual acronyms that come along with it.

Tiscali S.P.A.

Application Architect

Started: January 2002 | Ended: August 2006 | Tiscali is now Green ISP

Tiscali was an ISP in The Netherlands which started the ADSL price battle. Tiscali also operated their own dial-up network and later their own DSL network.

In order to support this price battle we designed and built a complete work-flow engine to support the DSL ordering process.

Being a large organization, it also required several other services to be designed and built.

Skills used: Java, Perl and C++

XOIP

Freelancer

Freelance job during February 2006 | URL: http://www.xoip.com

During the restart of the XOIP service, which was previously bought by Tiscali, the new owner contracted me to write their Fax service, allowing you to send files to their service which they, in turn, would send as a fax to the requested destination.

This piece of software has been running ever since with hardly any maintenance overhead.

Skills used: Perl

Personify INC

Software Engineer

Started: June 2000 | Ended: November 2001 | Personify is no longer in business

Personify was way ahead of its time, it provided Customer Intelligence based on the behavior of a visitor to a website, this was done by analyzing the access logs of the website.

Steve Krause (CTO) has a very in-depth retrospective about those years.

Skills used: Perl, Java and C++

Freeler ISP

Lead Software Engineer

Started: September 1999 | Ended: November 1999 | Freeler was bought by KPN

Freeler was a product of the ING and was the first free ISP in The Netherlands. It unleashed the first generation of free and low-cost ISPs.

For this job I refined the dial up tool I developed for the Postbank even further.

Postbank B.V.

Lead Software Engineer

Started: August 1998 | Ended: September 1999 | URL: http://www.postbank.nl

When the Postbank made its way into the world of ISPs I worked on creating a next-generation dial-up utility for its customers. A very large install base.