Simon Graham Email & Phone Number

London Area, United Kingdom

Canterbury, New Zealand

Starboard is a New Zealand-based SaaS startup. Its platform helps governments, NGOs, fisheries organizations, and border security teams to monitor maritime data. Vessel tracking is combined with satellite imagery, and various other data sources. The platform processes thousands of vessel positions per second. Advanced data analytics functions help users to detect illegal (IUU) fishing, suspicious vessel behavior, and other high-risk activities, which are critical for decision-making in maritime security and environmental protection.While being part of a 25-person startup requires you to be a jack of all trades, the majority of my time has been spent working on enhancing the functionality of Starboard's backend APIs and database. These are primarily implemented with Go (golang), GraphQL, and PostgreSQL. The PostgreSQL instance includes tens of terabytes of vessel position and event data. Additionally, I have implemented many Python cron jobs for things like data importing and processing. Most of Starboard's processes run in Kubernetes (GKE) on Google Cloud (GCP). I have also spent a significant portion of time on DevOps, such as optimizing Kubernetes cloud costs, and improving monitoring and alerting.At the 2024 NZ Hi-Tech Awards, Starboard won two awards, with "Hi-Tech Start-up Company of the Year" and "Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution".

Canterbury, New Zealand

Xerra Earth Observation Institute developed Starboard Maritime Intelligence. Starboard was incorporated as a separate company in early 2023.Starboard was the winner of the "Supreme Award" at the 2021 New Zealand Biosecurity Awards. These awards, granted by the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), recognise outstanding contributions to protecting the country.

Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand

A member of the Leapfrog team. Leapfrog is 3D visualisation and modelling software used by geologists, for example in the mining and exploration industries. It is a Python, Qt, and C/C++ desktop application running on Windows. With millions of lines of code, Leapfrog is probably one of the largest Python codebases in the world.My job has involved a mixture of bug fixing, implementing new features, and maintenance. In terms of time spent, it has been Python (90%) and C/C++ (10%).PyCharm, WSL (Ubuntu on Windows), Visual Studio, JIRA, Team City, and Bitbucket.Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Nasdaq: BSY) acquired Seequent in June 2021.

Canterbury, New Zealand

After I had to leave the UK for family reasons, I continued to work for Squarepoint Capital remotely from New Zealand as a contractor.A member of the Trading Services team, working with developers in Montreal and London, maintaining the core C++ framework shared by many of Squarepoint's mid to low-frequency trading strategies.C++11 / C++14 and CMake on CentOS Linux.

London, United Kingdom

Squarepoint Capital is a leading global quantitative hedge fund, with offices in Europe, Asia, and North America.I was initially a member of the Mid-Frequency (Data Engineering) Team. There I implemented a feed handler and backtest database for the Reuters I.B.E.S Realtime (broker estimates) data feed. This was implemented in C++11 and Python, using TibcoEMS, TibcoRV, and MySQL (a terabyte-sized TokuDB database). I also implemented Python web scrapers, downloaders, and databases for various other data sources.Later I worked as the tech lead and sole member of the Productivity Team, where I did all of the admin, upgrades and support for the Atlassian toolset (Confluence, JIRA, Crucible/FishEye, Bamboo, Crowd, and Bitbucket Server) and SVN. This involved lots of Python and Groovy scripting, and collaborating across various dev and quant teams, and with external consultants, to define and implement standardisation of the firm's CI / CD, build and deployment systems. We primarily did this with Bamboo, CMake, and packaging our software as RPMs. Over this time the firm grew from several dozen people to hundreds of people, and there were many challenges to help these systems operate efficiently at scale and across globally distributed data centres.Productivity was later absorbed into the newly created DevOps team, where I remained a member, as the firm continued rapid growth. The DevOps team was distributed across London, Montreal, New York, and Singapore. My work included ongoing Bamboo and Bitbucket admin and support, automation of builds and deployments, writing lots of Chef recipes (Ruby), Python automation scripts, and CMake builds. Systems we deployed, upgraded and supported (using Chef) included the Atlassian toolset, Apache Kafka, and HashiCorp Consul.Python, CMake, C++, Ruby, Groovy, SQL, Bash, CentOS Linux.

London, United Kingdom

A member of the nQuant trading unit.Primarily maintaining colo feed handlers for various EU equity and futures exchanges.C++, Python, Bash scripting, and Solarflare Onload on RHEL Linux.In December 2014, due to the changing regulatory environment, Barclays decided to spin out its nQuant unit into a standalone company named Squarepoint Capital.

Weybridge, United Kingdom

QCM is a CTA hedge fund. It uses systematic strategies to trade futures contracts. Total funds under management during my time there were approaching $US 1 billion.My role was to maintain and enhance the trading software and infrastructure, provide on-call support for the 24 hour trading desk, and to provide guidance and advice to the company’s directors and CEO on matters related to technology and software architecture. Given the small size of QCM (~30 employees) and the heterogeneous nature of QCM’s systems, the role required a hands-on approach to problem solving and diverse technical skills.The trading platform consisted of a number of C++ server side processes for generating orders, a web frontend for viewing order sheets, trades, and performing system control functions, Bloomberg data downloaders, and Windows C++ client software for routing orders to trader’s workstations.Software development was on RHEL Linux and in Visual Studio 2010 in C++ (Boost, C++11, Poco), SQL (MySQL), PHP, HTML, Javascript, Python, C#, Bash script, Excel VBA, and Java. The primary trading systems were written in C++ and PHP, whilst the back office functions and minor tools were written in a range of languages. Additional tasks included MySQL Server performance optimisation and admin, RHEL / CentOS systems admin, Apache httpd server, SVN, and Atlassian tools admin (JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, FishEye/Crucible, and Crowd), occasional Windows domain and VMWare admin, and consulting with the IT Manager on hardware purchasing decisions.I initiated a project to modernise the company’s software development processes using JIRA for bug tracking, Bamboo for continuous integration, and SVN for revision control.

London, United Kingdom

Member of the Equity Real-time Applications team, developing and maintaining a suite of equity market data-related functions for the Bloomberg Terminal. The Bloomberg Terminal is ubiquitous software in the financial services industry, enabling traders and other professionals to analyse financial market data.Original developer of the IBAS Intraday Broker Activity Summary function. IBAS enables the user to chart net buy/sell volume by broker, for a given security or exchange. The UI for this was written in Javascript using the Bloomberg proprietary RDEL framework. The backend was implemented in C/C++/Fortran as a BAS Bloomberg Application Service running inside the “BIG” Unix server environment. Within 3 months of release to production, IBAS had attracted over 1,000 daily unique users, exceeding expectations for the function.Developed Javascript UI and C++ server components for the ALRT “MyOMS” and Relative Security Alert features. ALRT is a complex ComDB2 based database system providing the ability to message/alert users when market events occur on selected securities.Provided customer support, bug fixing and testing for a range of terminal functions including BAS/BASM/MKAC, HILO, Quoteline, JQ, PDFE, and many Launchpad functions. These older functions are written largely in Fortran and C, with some UI components implemented in GTK.All software was developed via Unix remote terminal to run on Bloomberg Unix based server machines (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX).

Staines, United Kingdom

Samsung Electronics Research Institute (SERI).Key member of the Location-Based Services (LBS) research team, developing software GPS, GLONASS (SW-GNSS) and assisted GPS (A-GPS) solutions for future Samsung Mobile handsets.Designed and developed a Secure User Plane Location (SUPL) A-GPS client in C++. Provided expert support and guidance to engineers implementing a SUPL server at the Samsung Poland R&D centre in Warsaw. Travelled to Korea (Suwon and Gumi) several times to do simulation and testing using a Spirent ULTS.Responsible for SW-GNSS positioning engine implementation in C++. This included implementing user position calculation (LMS) and GPS NAV message (almanac and ephemeris) decoding algorithms.Platform interface design and integration. Extensive multi-threading, memory management, TCP/IP sockets and SSL/TLS (including OpenSSL) programming on multiple handset OSs. Ported A-GPS and GNSS software to Windows Mobile 6, Samsung (SHP), and Infineon (MMK) handsets.Developed Windows Mobile 6 stream interface device driver for a GPS RF frontend chip.Software development using Visual C++, GNU make, ARM Realview, Python, Rational Clearcase/Clearquest, Perforce, Subversion. Site-wide Subversion server administrator. Drove adoption of SVN as a revision control tool within the company.

Auckland, New Zealand

Navman was an early pioneer in GPS navigation for cars and trucks.Working in a team of 10-15 engineers developing the portable core navigation software libraries used by all Navman PNDs (portable navigation devices). A voice guidance ‘guru’, sharing primary responsibility for the design of the journey voice guidance instruction generation algorithms. Development mainly in C/C++. Responsible for "The Complete Software Lifecycle".Good knowledge of the TeleAtlas MultiNet data format, import and conversion processes. A major contributor in the areas of map data format specification for navigation attributes (signposts, route numbers, bifurcations, turn restrictions, etc), speech data file recording and encoding (ADPCM and Ogg Vorbis), implementation of regression test frameworks, support for time and time zones, journey simulation/playback.Spent six weeks in May – July 2006 road testing a Navman iCN750 PND in Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France.Software development using Visual Studio C/C++, Cygwin (GCC, GNU make), ARM Realview, MapInfo Professional, SVN and CVS.Acted as part-time administrator of the SVN and JIRA servers, including implementing new JIRA workflows.

Auckland, New Zealand

Working in a team of 5 engineers developing the SmartST for Palm OS navigation application. This software was bundled with the Navman 4460 Bluetooth GPS receiver for Palm OS 5 (ARM based) PDAs such as the Tungsten T3.Responsible for writing GUI, communications, I/O, database, memory management, and other Palm OS platform specific code. Advanced use of Palm OS 5 PACE native objects (ARM native code) and glue logic to support the Navman core navigation libraries on Palm OS. These devices were extremely resource constrained for running GPS navigation. SmartST was probably the most complex software to ever run on Palm OS and we had to use a lot of "tricks" to get it to work.Software development using Metrowerks Codewarrior C, Visual Studio C/C++, and ARM Realview.

Auckland, New Zealand

Independently designed and created a Palm OS GPS test application for the Navman 500 serial GPS sleeve for the Palm m500 series of Palm OS 4 (Motorola 68k based) PDAs.The software included functionality for track recording, simple navigation via waypoints, displaying a ‘breadcrumb trail’ of the path, displaying satellite positions and signal strength, and computing statistics for speed, distance and travel time.The work involved Palm OS 4 application development in Metrowerks Codewarrior C and writing a software emulator for the GPS Sleeve in Visual Basic 6.

Auckland, New Zealand

Cubic Defence NZ Ltd (previously, OSCMAR International Limited) is a manufacturer of training and simulations systems for military forces around the world.Responsible for writing user and technical manuals that defined the operation of Oscmar products. This work included writing mechanical, electrical, and firmware descriptions for the Oscmar Radio-based Laser Detector Module (RLDM) and the Vehicle Hit Indicator (VHI).