Client – Manheim

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Note: This was not a contract but I have shown it here due to its significance in my software development career.

Manheim Retail Services create web sites for many major vehicle manufacturers including Audi, Toyota and Volkswagen, to allow visitors to locate used vehicles at several thousand vehichle dealerships and fleet centres. These web sites constantly receive thousands of simultaneous requests throughout the day and night, satisfying Service Level Agreements that demand 100% reliability and exceptional performance. Manheim Retail Services is very reliant on its technology in web sites, infrastructure and databases and I am proud to have been a major influence in all these areas during my 11 years at the company, achieving many promotions and new responsibilities along the way. I worked closely with both technical and non-technical employees as well as customers and senior management.

My wide technical knowledge, experience of the business processes and appreciation of the company’s limited resources naturally lead me in to more managerial roles as the company grew, helping designers and developers produce better sites. This ultimately led to my being asked to form a database team under my leadership which maintained close ties with the software development, testing, infrastructure, and business management teams.

Database Team Manager (3 years)

I was responsible for development and administration of numerous production and development SQL Server installations. My team worked closely, under my leadership, with all departments on a complete rebuild of the core systems and web applications. This enabled the company to improve the performance, reliability, scalability and flexibility of its products whilst reducing development cost and time to deployment.

Web Farm Administrator (2 years)

I was responsible for the web server content and interaction with the hosting company as well as maintenance of clustered SQL Servers on the live web farm and numerous back-end SQL servers. I reorganised and tuned the web farm to improve performance and reliability and I vastly improved security and maintenance of the live databases (there was no database team at that time). I also lead the team in moving hosting providers as the company expanded (to use Verizon Business hosting) which involved moving over 100 web sites together with their DNS records and all databases, without any loss of service.

Senior Software Developer (6 years)

I produced web sites for the company’s largest, most prestigious and lucrative clients, requiring excellent analytical skills from a design, software and database perspective, to satisfy customer requirements whilst also satisfying the company’s need to turn a healthy profit. Many of my innovative designs continue to be used today and a large percentage of the stored procedures still in use where written by me. Despite moving in to more database related roles, I have always enjoyed working with software and regularly continue to get involved with the software team members to debug performance issues and discuss new features. My history in software development coupled with in-depth understanding of database and web server functionality provide a better understanding of the issues facing modern application development.

Technical sills used within this position

Database development and administration

• SQL SERVER (2005, 2000, 6.5)
• database design
• database administration
• extensive t-sql development
• SSRS
• SSIS
• database security
• extensive replication
• installation
• disaster recovery planning
• debugging, monitoring, analysis
• capacity management
• mentoring and team motivation

 

Web Application and Deployment

• application programming using c# and dot net versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.5
• requirements gathering
• documentation
• unit testing
• estimation and cost analysis
• debugging
• error handling
• code and system refactoring
• source safe source control administration

Web farm administration

dealing with suppliers 

management of multiple web servers

management of clustered sql server

capacity management

performance and reliability monitoring

debugging

issue resolution

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