W. Tait Cyrus 

1410 Owl Ridge Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80919  - 719-260-7227 - tait.cyrus@usa.net

PROFILE 

Twenty five years of computer engineering experience with proven abilities in skills ranging from software to hardware design, web design, configuration management, system administration, testing, networking and security.  A quick learner, a team player, as well as a self starter.  The ability to coach others, strong follow-through,  and advanced problem solving abilities.  Ability to learn new computer languages and libraries quickly.  Vision to anticipate problems and needs in both the short term and long term, and the ability to use new technologies.

WORK  EXPERIENCE

2006-2007 – Global Mapping International (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Software Engineer 

• Wrote ~17K lines of PHP, Perl (~1K lines), and JavsScript (~2.8K lines)  to map/graph large sets of demographic data (20K+ rows by 300 columns). Integrated with e107 (CMS) and Zen-Cart (e-Commerce). All software managed by subversion.

2004-2007 – Independent Consultant – Various jobs 

• Installed and maintained 4 TWiki based web sites.  One internal to a company and 3 for not-for-profit companies.  The company internal site helped establish communications between developers, testers, and management for several projects.  TWiki allowed simple updates of web pages by individual members of the various teams without the need for any web design experience.

• Worked on ~24K line PHP/Javscript web data management and collaboration system. 

• Created two CDROMs containing over 1,700 photographs allowing users to navigate through the photographs using HTML pages.  These HTML pages had presorted the photographs giving users several choices of how to view the photographs.

2002-2004 – Agilent (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Software Engineer 

• Helped to install, setup and maintain Foglight (from Quest Software), a system monitoring package that in real time monitored approximately 100 Windows based computers distributed around the world generating alerts for critical situations.  Wrote numerous Perl scripts (~10K lines) to aid in the management and running of this package.

2002 – Wind River (California) – Independent Consultant – Software Engineer 

• Wrote several OO based Perl "plugins" augmenting the support provided by TWiki, a Web-based collaboration platform.  One plugin allowed users the ability to create dynamic web pages based on data in multiple databases.  Other plugins allowed users to dynamically generate plots and graphics showing data from TWiki  tables.

1998-2002 – Mindport (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Software Engineer 

• Increased developer productivity by writing a suite of automated object oriented Perl scripts and UNIX shell scripts (over 20K lines) for supporting software builds and web page status reporting in a multi platform environment. These scripts decreased developer down time by 10% saving the company approximately $2,500/month over the life of several projects. 

• Created a software build environment supporting 3 software projects running on 4 different platforms (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux & Windows) that was automated providing hands free builds that were consistent and reproducible from build to build.  One of the projects required continuous builds (every 5 minutes) to support an extreme programming team.

• Designed and created a web page reporting mechanism that provided developers with instantaneous feedback on the status of current and historical builds and automated test runs. 

• Improved  stability and performance of a ~25K C language UNIX security analysis tool.  Performance was improved by an order of magnitude allowing for significantly faster analysis of customer's computers.

• Configured a Java based install environment (InstallAnywhere) for 7 products producing CDROMs that supported installs on multiple architectures (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows NT).  Also wrote numerous UNIX shell scripts, Windows BAT files, and Perl scripts that were used during and after product installs providing customers with consistent interfaces to the products.  These installs provided a consistent and reproducible installation environment (previous installs were all manually performed).

• Performed system administration functions for numerous UNIX systems including Solaris, Linux and HP-UX. 

1998 – MCI (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Senior Software Engineer 

• Wrote Perl scripts to perform Y2K analysis of over 1+ million lines of C++ and Motif code allowing error free running at customers site. 

1997 – Ten Queue (Monument, Colorado) – Software Instructor 

• Taught: 4-day beginning UNIX class, 4-day advanced UNIX class, and 5-day Perl class. 

1993-1997 – Sun Microsystems (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Software Engineer 

• Worked on a 1+ million line C++ and Motif Solaris system administration application (AdminTool and AutoClient) that eliminated the need for customers to have knowledge of the Solaris operating system allowing lower-cost junior system administrators to manage a Solaris system. 

• Wrote a 2000+ line shell script to reduce the need for customers to manually install software patches to their Solaris operating system (primarily AutoClients). 

1990-1993 – Convex Computer Corp. (Colorado Springs, Colorado) – Test/Software Engineer

• Wrote a UNIX script that provided the test team with the ability for multiple testers to run tests on a single machine.  Prior to this script, only a single tester could run at a time.

• Wrote tests for a real time operating system improving the performance and stability to customers. 

1982-1990 – University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico) – Research Engineer 

• Wrote a UNIX like operating system for a Z80 processor (all in C).  Also wrote a UNIX vi like editor with enhanced capabilities to support user defined fonts and on the fly graphics.  This editor eased the development of graphics for a basketball arena message system.

• Helped design the hardware for 3 computers, then build and test and write the software for them. 

• Worked on a HyperCube system parallel processing system. 

SECURITY CLEARANCE 

Held a DOE "Q" security clearance through August 1990. 

EDUCATION 

M.S. - Computer Engineering, The University of New Mexico 

B.S. - Computer Engineering, The University of New Mexico