Eric Drewes Email & Phone Number

Greater Atlanta Area

I am pleased to accept a position of test engineer within the TCoE group at First Data. My duties will include EMV certifications, testing of payment applications and APIs, and working with the Class A terminal certification teams to support compliance mandates, new application features, and new terminal hardware solutions.

I maintain existing First Data terminal products for compliance purposes as well as design enhancements and new features. I work across multiple hardware platforms (Verifone, Hypercom, XAC) and write our application code in C and C++ for both Motorola and ARM processors using Windows CE development environments. I also create and maintain design documentation for all projects in both Excel and Word. I have assisted with Incident Reports from the field and worked with external teams both to resolve host/terminal problems as well as to work through with QA and Certification processes and address any defects they report in a timely manner.

I was responsible for writing device driver software that allows a customer to remotely monitor and control the various types of equipment used in generating their uplink video signal. My duties consisted of developing communications software(either in C or within XML constraints) that conformed to the manufacturer specific protocol, creating GUI screens for these devices, and implementation of the new software into an existing M&C system. I also performed in the capacity of installer and would from time-to-time travel to a customer site to set up the new Crystal M&C system which involved running network cables, setup of servers, setup and configuration of Comtrol DeviceMasters, and establishing connection of all remote devices to the M&C system. Because of my on-site experience in this capacity I have gained considerable knowledge and skills related to troubleshooting network cabling issues, serial data communication issues, as well as configuring external and other 3rd party hardware to communicate with the M&C system.

During this time period, my role had shifted more towards project management and quality assurance. My terminal software only required minor updates and an occasional enhancement, so I was assigned to work as a test liason between Lynk and 3rd party developers, such as Verifone, Hypercom, Ingenico, and Lipman. I would establish and maintain regular contact with their developers, assist their developers with any questions, conduct testing and verification of transaction data generated by their application, and would also perform final in-house testing of their application. As a result of my efforts in this area, I quickly learned how to operate and troubleshoot all types of point-of-sale equipment. My work ethic in this area of discipline is that when I test software I must ensure that the application is impervious to all types of environmental and operational factors while attempting to push it beyond its documented physical limitations. I have been commended for the types of test procedures I have conducted on software. I am very creative and always thinking of new ways to create that “perfect storm” needed to generate a failure. It has been a very rare exception that something gets by me and because of this I have been entrusted to test applications within the banking industry and the satellite industry where both data security and 24x7x365 reliability is paramount.

I originally started in a Computer Operations/Help Desk position. I was given the opportunity to learn programming on POS terminals and moved into development. I have a very strong background in the transaction processing industry and many years of experience developing terminal software, specifically on Verifone products such as Tranz and Omni series terminals. I have written software that utilized pinpads, checkreaders, dispenser mechanisms, and other types of external hardware. I have written applications for retail, restaurant, hospitality, grocery, petroleum, and even some stand-alone kiosk implementations. I also have also gained considerable knowledge and understanding of data communications and protocol standards. This type of experience and creativity proved invaluable when I was tasked with creating an application on a POS terminal that operated as a full featured ATM and was a successful prototype model for the first generation of dial-up ATMs. I also was a key support person for many other departments as a training resource and I helped to define and implement many of the operational procedures these departments used. On several occasions I performed duties in the capacity of Quality Assurance to ensure that software provided by 3rd party developers were industry compliant and met our benchmarks.

I was tasked with research and development for Lynk's efforts to break into the Grocery and C-Store markets. I attended a couple of trade shows to familiarize myself with other competitor's offerings and following this wrote applications on the Verifone Tranz, Omni, and Everest terminals that would be used in smaller multi-lane grocery stores and smaller c-stores that wanted petroleum processing capability. Because this was a high profile project, I was sent on-site to perform the installations of these new systems and train the customer's personnel on use of the new system. I would remain on site for a couple of days to assist with any issues that may arise and to document all problems and resolutions. Once these products completed beta testing and were released to the sales force, I was responsible for training the various departments in the areas they needed in order to properly support the new product. The petroleum applications were the most challenging as each fleet card issuer requires specific information from the user based on the magnetic stripe value.

Universal ATM was an alliance partner with Lynk. Joe Vu requested a specialty application that would interface with Lynk's host, however management did not feel that the application was a worthwhile investment of their development resources. With permission from Lynk management, I developed the application as a side project and wrote a customer operated cash advance application which operated on the Verifone Tranz series of terminals using a pinpad 2000 as the customer interface for security purposes. The application proved to be a very successful endeavor for Universal ATM who deployed several hundred of these units and earned substantial revenue from the sales and customer use of the terminals.