Tom Leys Email & Phone Number

Auckland, New Zealand

I'm a contractor for Hire who can create any software solution you can dream up.Currently- Applying advanced algorithms to online retail - Creating a computer opponent for an upcoming VR strategy game- Migrating a complex existing web service from dedicated servers to AWS hosting with modern deploymentI'd be delighted to discuss your project with you if you're looking for a top-notch software contractor.

Auckland, New Zealand

GridSpy aims to transform the market for energy efficiency through the provision of a simple, reliable monitoring product that provides high resolution data. For GridSpy, I was the key software engineer and product designer. I created the entire website including back-end software and firmware development.- Django Backend for dashboards, configuration and administration- Twisted Backend to communicate with GridHubs and store data in PostgreSQL- Static Website content- In browser JS using D3, Knockout and JQuery including custom Graphs and smart data loading- Firmware for Gridhubs on 8051: most high level features such as Flash storage, In system programming and networking- Marketing and Sales

Auckland, New Zealand

Zozo is a Japanese fashion company which also provides a computer vision measuring service. Initially conceptualised for online tailored clothes it has pivoted into a fitness oriented offering called “ZozoFit”I created a custom 3D viewer using ThreeJS with advanced features such as custom skinning, triangulation and visualization of mesh differences using custom shaders. I performed various blue-sky developments turning complex feature ideas into reality.Along with 3D tasks I also created Python tools and performed data analysis using pandas along with data compression for their custom 3D data. I set up and trained a neural net to extract accurate measurements.

Auckland, New Zealand

Part of a senior Kiwi development team of 4 who created the new app Go Surgery for iOS, which is on the app-store. I implemented additional Back-end functionality for Go-Surgery using Django, AWS and similar, enabling surgeons to document and share their workflows.I collaborated with my local developers in NZ and the larger back-end team in the UK to integrate the features required by this new app into the existing codebase.I translated end-user requirements into suitable REST API interactions which were reliable and efficient for user data creation. Implemented python code to process and manage these interactions and deployed to the site hosted on AWS.

Auckland, New Zealand

Tech Used: C#, Excel, D3, JSI assisted with in-depth analysis and modelling of the milk flows within a major milk producer in the South Island. Stackflo’s role was to optimise the storage, mine was to validate the plan and illustrate how it worked through modelling.I helped complete and commission a new automation installation for Fonterra. This was a balance of release management to site, on site debugging and commissioning and additional feature development. Explaining technical concepts to nontechnical stakeholders during testing, demonstration and training was important here.I used both tasks as an opportunity to make complex code simple, untested code tested andreliably deliver what was asked for.

Auckland, New Zealand

Tech Used: Python, C, DelphiI was drafted to reverse engineer the requirements from an existing application andfacilitate refactoring (code cleanup) using automated testing. I grew this role over time to faciliating a culture of automated testing across the team.Because the application communicated over a variety of UDP and TCP/IP channels, I created acommunications library (in Python) suited to encoding and decoding the variety of high level binaryprotocols developed by Cubic. I then analysed network traffic to create tests based on observedsystem behaviour.We achieved a situation where product features were not considered finished without a very highlevel, user understandable automated test being in place. And these tests became easy to write.For instance – a soldier is initialised by the system and configured to be a mine-clearer (via TCP/IP)so a series of messages to the radio comms station is sent correctly (via UDP). Among other things,I enabled messages to be expressed in a very easy to use OOM style in python (like c structs) or in.h or YAML.- Adapted Django’s Python ORM to the task of binary data mapping to/from python objects “Metaprogramming”- Reverse engineered application to create a suite of automated functional tests which facilitated safe refactoring- Helped to establish a culture of automated testing- Automated previously manual tasks with various firmware devices.

Auckland, New Zealand

Stackflo creates a robot that moves crates of liquid milk around a coldstore. I created the intelligence that instructed the robot what sequence of moves to make to efficiently fulfill a given client order. This included- Efficient modeling of the flow of stacks and crates through the robot- Clever algorithms to move these crates- Object oriented design of the system into modular blocks- Robot control, communications and commissioning.

I was a maintenance programmer on Right Hemisphere’s Deep View. This little viewerenabled interactive 3D drawings to be delivered throughout our customer’s staff. Taking theform of both a standalone application and an ActiveX object, Deep View was similar togames in that it had real-time 3D graphics.There were some interesting performance issues lurking deep within the software such as an O(n3)algorithm where a O(n2) one would do, fixing UI selection on large models. I also added the abilityto import and view electrical schematics.

I improved Compac Sort's image analysis and classification software designed tocategorise fruit and vegetables. This application has a long history with manydifferent developers over time. Duties included refactoring and code maintenance. Ialso suggested, designed and implemented several measures to improve theirapplications performance and lower its memory footprint. This contract emphasisedthe use of boost (particularly the GIL library) and C++ template meta-programming.

With Sony, I initially worked as a systems programmer for 5 months, followed by17 months as a User Interface (UI) programmer on SingStar. All development wasfor Play Station 3. Programming on SingStar was a highly varied role in a multidisciplinaryteam. SingStar emphasised simple, intuitive user interface design withhighly polished visuals in an artist and design led environment.I wrote a wide range of UI code on SingStar, from the bindings between the off-lineand on-line UI to most components used to define pages. I used our in-house 3Dengine to render the UI components. I also mastered XSLT in order to translate datadefined using XML into a new, better structured format.In this role I collaborated with many different disciplines across the SingStar team.It was a careful collaboration with artistic design, game design, usability experts,SingStore developers and programmers on the team creating UI pages using thecomponents I created.

Reverse engineered an existing PHPNuke application, taught myself MySql and expanded their existing system far beyond expectations.

Full-time from February 2004, prior work done on a contract-by-contract basis.Technman develops custom software. Each project required firmware that wasconstantly responsive to user input and functioned on very limited hardware, with asmall code and RAM footprint. Entire systems were developed to customerrequirements including 8051 firmware, client facing PC applications and internaltools.I fulfilled many roles, from collaborating in the design of the finished product,creating the software architecture, to scheduling my work, bug fixing and on sitesupport. Clarifying feature requests, educating and converting customers along withsuccessful demonstrations were essential. This role also gave me a great breadth ofexperience including non-programming tasks such as sales, administration, IT andclient relations.Projects include:● Century Resources Down Hole Tool and PC software● Kiddie karts, stands, PC software – a complete instore entertainment system● Wireless handheld barcode scanner● PumpPower petrol / diesel motor controller● Input / Output Module drivers, API, Demo and examples● 'Pinball machine' demo – Catch balls a the bottom of a chute● 'Train sorting' demo – Sorting physical carriages on a model train.● RF communications module● Wireless Light posts for sports training complete with PC software.Key firmware technologies developed:● In system reprogramming including transmission and reception of new binariesover radio.● Flash / Eeprom file system for reliable permanent storage and retrieval● Drivers for : LCD, Coin and note readers, I2C temperature probes and more● Rotary reed switch decoder using hardware interrupts and timers.● Custom radio protocol with error checking and recovery● State-machine driven, highly responsive time slicing solutions.

Bcom, Management

Bsc, Computer Science

Activities and Societies: SDK