OBJECTIVE

Full-time position developing and maintaining UNIX / Linux system-level software or other interesting technology. I seek an individual contributor position with some responsibility for technological decisions. I am comfortable communicating with the entire development community, from designers to engineers, QA, support, OEM partners, resellers, and most especially end users.

My most important goal is to always learn while I work.

EXPERIENCE

20 years developing, maintaining and supporting complex software systems under multiple operating systems and languages while providing proactive communications with customers and channel partners.

Technologies:

• x86 virtualization technologies
• UNIX / Linux kernel, drivers and utilities
• C, Pascal, FORTRAN, JavaScript
• x86 and other assembly languages
• UNIX / Linux scripting languages (sh, ksh, bash, sed, awk, some perl)
• many other languages visited long enough to fix bugs written in them

Skills:

• debugging, troubleshooting, problem solving
• performance analysis, tuning, algorithmic enhancement
• ability to successfully interact with highly technical customers
• ability to successfully interact with non-technical customers, especially solving problems they don't understand
• strong focus on customer / user needs and desires
• strong focus on preserving backward compatibility
• security assessment and hardening (implementing defenses against known or suspected attack channels)
• ability to design at system, program, user interface, algorithm and data structure levels

EMPLOYMENT

Jan 2006-present

VMware, Inc.

Senior Software Engineer (MTS3), Continuing Product Engineering, VMware vSphere (ESX Server)

• Escalations and maintenance of VMware ESX/ESXi/vSphere virtualization platforms and related technologies.
• Security research and fixes.
• Code and documentation reviews.
• Contributed to the delivery of ESX/ESXi/vSphere patches, updates and full product releases from 2.5.4 through 4.1 Update 1, as well as several releases of VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and related products.
• Used my knowledge of SCO operating systems internals to improve VMware's ability to run SCO Guest OSes. I was instrumental in the success of at least two very large SCO replicated site bids (over 2000 installations each):
• a multinational fast food restaurant
• a nationwide grocery chain (VMware revenue of over $8 million)
• Primary responsibilities:
  • Receive, triage, research incoming bug reports
  • Design, test, shepherd through code review, submit code fixes
  • Determine which fixes must enter which patch or update releases
  • Respond to escalated customer issues
  • Review other engineers' code, documentation, project plans etc.
  • Improve our processes

May 2005-Dec 2005

IS-Data, LLC (is-data.net)

Senior Forensic Investigator, Security Analyst

• Analyzed desktop computers suspected to contain evidence pertinent to client company internal investigations, civil and criminal legal cases.
• Performed security evaluations including penetration tests.
• Assessed forensics software and tools.

2001-2004

The Santa Cruz Operation / Caldera International / The SCO Group

SCO OpenServer Architect

• Steered all aspects of ongoing development and maintenance of the SCO OpenServer UNIX operating system.
• Worked with multiple groups comprising 25-50 designers, engineers, documenters, testers, packagers, marketing and sales people.
• Designed and implemented core kernel and utility enhancements.
• Delivery and first customer shipment of a complete UNIX operating system product release (SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.7), five major maintenance packs, and the OpenServer 6.0.0 beta containing an entirely new kernel and development system.
• Throughout my tenure at SCO, directly helped thousands of customers on the USENET SCO newsgroups, CompuServe, trade shows, and other such interactive venues. Scope ranged from pointing out the right documentation all the way to recognizing, reporting, and then fixing kernel design flaws based on seemingly trivial customer questions.

1993-2001

The Santa Cruz Operation

Senior Escalation Research Engineer

• Customer-driven, time critical and high priority research and correction of UNIX operating system facilities.
• Duties included customer and OEM engineering contact, problem determination, bug reporting, tracking and fixing, code review, source check-in, regression testing, change management, documentation and packaging.
• Solved major problems involving kernel loading, memory management, clock handling, NIC, HBA and graphics drivers, TCP/IP stack, disk partitioning, symmetric multiprocessing, BIOS interactions, and many other areas.

1989-1993

The Santa Cruz Operation

Senior Technical Support Engineer

• Expert support of UNIX System V, development tools, networking.
• Customer interaction, problem research, escalation and documentation, doc review, software maintenance, internal Support tool development, 2nd tier (real-time assistance of junior phone analysts).

1986-1989

Worthington Data Solutions (now Worth Data)

Software Engineer

• Rewrote their flagship product, enhancing performance and reliability, resulting in sharply reduced support costs. Same product (greatly evolved) is still shipping in 2008.
• Wrote keyboard, serial I/O and printer drivers.

1986-1988

Dr. Dobbs Journal

Contributing Editor, Manager of CompuServe forum

• Coordinated communications with and between magazine customers on a variety of topics.

1984-1985

Borland International

Technical Support Engineer, Manager of CompuServe forum

• Supported Turbo Pascal, SideKick, SuperKey, other lesser products.
• Rewrote and productized "Turbo Graphix Toolbox" product.

1981-1982

CompCo/Northouse and Associates

Junior Development Engineer

• Contributed to the development of "HerdStar" dairy cattle management software, later sold to DeLaval International AB.

EDUCATION

• Various VMware in-house classes on VMware product internals, source code management systems, administration and use of products
• 1990s: Mindshare, Inc. classes:
  • PCI System Architecture
  • Pentium Pro and Pentium II System Architecture
  • IA32 Protected Mode Software Architecture
• SCO in-house C++, UNIX Internals, and other classes.
• September 1984: left University without a degree in order to pursue my career in industry. I was learning much more by my own independent study than in class.
• 1982-1984: University of Wisconsin-River Falls: Computer Science major program (not completed)
• 1981-1982: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities: Computer Science major program (not completed)

OTHER SKILLS, EXPERIENCE, AND PERSONAL INTERESTS

• Technical writing, editing and proofreading
• Gourmet cuisine (cooking as well as eating)
• Reading, particularly science fiction
• World travel (including 9 months of full-time telecommuting from Russia, Estonia and other far-off places) and cultural research
• Gardening, hobby farming
• Mathematical and computer games, especially Conway's Life (my "TurboLife" implementation from 1985) and other cellular automata

REFERENCES

• My 6000+ USENET posts: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:bela+author:lubkin
• Contact information for the following available to qualified employers:
• Jas Cluff, Senior MTS, VMware, Inc.
• Mukund Gunti, Senior MTS, VMware, Inc.
• Kamal Mostafa, Senior Software Engineer, Canonical USA Inc.
• Meg McRoberts, Senior Staff Technical Writer, Trend Micro Inc.
• Mike Almond, OpenServer Product Team Manager, The SCO Group -- now at TriCipher, Inc.
• John DuBois, Member of Technical Staff, The SCO Group -- now seeking
• Evan Hunt, Software Engineer, Internet Systems Consortium
• Kean Johnston, Software Engineer, Google -- now independent contractor
• Malcolm Rieke, Principal Investigator, IS-Data LLC -- now Principal, Rediskme LLC
• Doug Michels, Founder, The Santa Cruz Operation

KEYWORD SOUP

Following are some additional technologies with which I have varying degrees of familiarity.

• 802.11 ARP ATAPI BSD C++ Concurrency csh CSS CVS DHCP Embedded Ethernet Filesystems FreeBSD FTP HTML HTTP ICMP IMAP Internals IP Java Low-level Mac Macintosh Multi-threading NFS Opera OS/X OSX PCI POP3 PPP Python RFCs Samba SCCS SCSI SLIP SMTP SNMP Solaris SSL TCP tcl tcsh UDI UDP UnixWare USB Virtual machines VMware Workstation Windows Wireless XHTML XML XP