Michael Rans Email & Phone Number

Remote Working From Wellington, New Zealand And Previously Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen Area, Denmark

Greenfield projects required choice of technologies, set up of new infrastructure and education of team. Transitioned from Java/C++ to Scala/Python stack. Data visualised with Waterloo, D3.js, AngularJS. Jupyter, Django used for collaborative calculation prototypes.Kickstarted development in Risk, restoring damaged relationship between business and IT. Introduced Scrum, wiki, versioning, continuous integration. Networked across Nordea to document existing systems, share code and discover sources of data to import into MongoDB and PostgreSQL. Helped determine IT budget.Managed proof of concept early warning risk system, starting with selecting appropriate language, Python. Ensured it could run from server rather than desktop and encouraged refactoring and writing of acceptance tests when apparent Board of Directors relying on it and IT not developing production equivalent in near future.

London, United Kingdom

Started IT consulting business and worked for customer, Nomura, within risk management in the investment bank leading development of a system with a team of 7 other programmers in London and Mumbai. See Nomura below.

London, United Kingdom

Rescued failing system by rapid stabilisation and then radical surgery after original authors fired, enabling global roll out and approval by Japanese and UK regulators. Made system run in a quarter the time with twice the trade volume on a 12 core server instead of 144 cores hired from IBM. Simplified system by huge refactoring, replacing step by step all monolithic VBA and SQL Server stored procedures with modular Python scripts using SQLite tables. Condensed Java code base by half. Created automatic versioned Autosys jil to Ant conversion.Set up development infrastructure including Jenkins build server. Wrote Ant testing framework, as well as Python and Java unit, acceptance and system tests. Implemented generic results comparisons and reporting enhancements to accelerate work of Business Analysts.

London, United Kingdom

As internal technology consultant, architected tactical and strategic solutions. Advised quantitative analysts on technical issues, including the introduction of source control across the department. Rolled out web and Excel interfaces for credit exposure computation with single sign on access control to 100 credit officers. Used asynchronous Javascript (AJAX) to control invisible browser and VBA to generate Jython scripts sent to Tomcat server for execution. Results returned to Excel using JFreeReport. Made internal and front office C++ equity derivatives libraries run on DataSynapse grid to enable portfolio analysis and provided the C++ libraries with Java, C# and VBA APIs and clients. Developed hedge simulator consisting of Java web interface to QRC interest rates modelling language using Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Jython and SWIG to generate a Java API for the C++ library.Coded an R web server to run scripts through a browser including display of graphics (before any official version had been started).

London, United Kingdom

Researched distributed wireless video sensor networks. Designed prototypes for tracking and posture, activity and gait interpretation on FPGA and Nexperia DSP for presentation to Department for Trade and Industry and various companies including Huntleigh Healthcare. Managed 9 students on 4 projects covering 3D visualisation using OpenGL and Java, Symbian programming, FPGA algorithm development.Programmed cross-platform distributed sensor network simulator with objects that communicate using SOAP over HTTP. Became SourceForge developer for libcsoap, and made web server multi-threaded.Developed Java application to read an XML Schema, automatically create relational database tables with keys and populate them using XPath, JDBC and SQL.

Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Employed as a Consultant Engineer at Celoxica to work on a range of contracts.Successfully rescued anti missile system project for Northrop Grumman involving working in UK and Chicago to develop signalling systems including drivers on a PC-104 FPGA board.For a car navigation system for Siemens, Eindhoven, reduced VHDL and Handel-C ASIC design size by 15%.

London, United Kingdom

Contracted to work through Ian Page with Californian startup involving novel video processing algorithm development in Handel-C for HDTV on a custom multi-FPGA board.

London

Employed primarily to perform algorithm development and manage hardware/software co-design projects. Presented demonstrations to many clients and venture capitalists. Wrote three patents and strategy whitepaper. Designed training material and gave course to overseas engineers. Specified tools and platform for basestation hardware development. Modelled UMTS algorithms such as Viterbi and turbo decoders in Matlab and ported them to FPGA using Handel-C and VHDL. Conformance tests involved Simulink calling FPGA algorithms, providing useful illustrations to show customers and investors.Managed project to create standard API and abstraction layer for hardware algorithms and devices in VHDL, so IP designed to the API could be called from software scheduler. Designed in UML and C++ generic Hardware Algorithm Driver for calling coprocessors on TI6416, as well as FPGA and ASIC-based algorithms. Developed common API for DSP DMA channels, interrupts, timers, etc. for Runtime and testing strategy for Designer component.

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

1999-2000: Started sponsored 4th year project, continued at university, to port demodulator running on DEC Alpha to FPGA using Handel-C, with high level design in UML. Title : Using Software Techniques to design a Hardware Demodulator1998-1999: Completed Ministry of Defence sponsored 3rd year project, obtaining highest mark in the year, to implement modulators and filters on FPGA using Handel-C.Title : The Design of a Software Radio using Reconfigurable Logic.Summer 1998: Ported OS9 C source code to VXWorks Real time Operating System and Java implementation of graphical front end designed to run remotely.Summer 1997: Constructed remote networked hardware monitoring program in Java.1995-1996: Designed and implemented improved algorithms for existing demodulator. Took consultant’s Matlab code and ported to C++ to be linked with existing C code.