Resume

(only partially translated)



Alexander Hristov

Personal Information

Current Location : Madrid, Spain
Born on June 14th, 1973 in Sofía, Bulgaria.
Academic background : Physics, at Universidad Complutense




Languages Spoken:
  • Bulgarian- Fluent
  • Spanish - Fluent
  • Russian - Intermediate
  • English - Fluent
  • Currently studying mandarin chinese.
Programming Languages

(ordered from most recently to least recently used)

  • Java (11 years )
  • JavaScript (4 years)
  • C# (3 years )
  • PHP (1 year)
  • SQL (7 years )
  • UML (3 years)
  • Delphi and Pascal (10 years )
  • VB/VBA/VB.NET (2 years )
  • C/C++ (2 years )
  • Assembly language - 80x86 family of processors, up to 80386 (5 years )
  • xBase family of languages (dBase, FoxBase, Clipper) (10 years )
  • FORTH (4 years )
  • LotusScript (1 year )
  • LISP (2 years )

Areas of technical expertise
  • Software Testing & QA. See a sample list of bugs  reported by me in well-known projects. Software quality management. Software metrics, Quality standards (ISO 9000-3) and project management.

  • .NET Platform 3.0, including WCF

  • Java 2 Platform, including J2EE, J2ME, and some specific frameworks like Struts, Hibernate, JDO, JMF, JMX, etc..

  • Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). SOAP and WS-* protocols in general (WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, etc..). WSDL, XML Encryption, XML Signature. ESB (Mule, Apache ServiceMix) and JBI

  • Rich Internet Applications (RIA), mainly using AJAX

  • Networking and TCP/IP programming, both low level (socket) and protocol-level.

  • J2EE Application Servers - Bea Weblogic, Websphere Application Server, JBoss

  • XML and related technologies – XPath, XSLT, XML Schema, SOAP, UDDI. WSDL, XML Signature, XBRL, etc....

  • Crypography and security systems - public/private key systems, elliptic curve cryptography, PRNGs, cryptographic protocols, PKI, steganography, digital certificates and SSL

  • Databse design and administration (MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle)

  • Intermediate design  -CorelDraw, PhotoShop, MMFusion, etc.

  • Implementation of non-trivial algorithms : deltas, computational geometry, textual database indexing, 2D and 3D indexing (R-Trees, BSP Trees), etc.

  • Design and development of languages, parsers and compilers. Source-code analyzers. Code generators. LEX-YACC software

  • Digital Electronics and circuits

  • Numerical analysis. Numerical methods. FFT, Differential equations and PDEs. Complex-variable analysis
Publications and Conferences
  1. "Hacking the OpenJDK Compiler" - Tutorial on the inner workings of the javac compiler, endorsed by Sun Microsystems.

  2. Books commissioned by Time2Know - Netherlands for their training courses - 2007:
    • "Web Services and SOA Fundamentals"- 3 Training Day courseware
    • "RIA - The Ubiquitous Visual Interface for SOA" - 1 Training Day courseware
    • "JSF Workshop" - 2 Training Day courseware

  3. Many training manuals for the training courses at Planetalia S.L, including:
    • "Programming with Java and WSAD" , 2002 - 2007
    • "Developing web applications wib Bea Weblogic 9", 2004 - 2007
    • "Developing web applications with IBM Websphere 6", 2004-2007
    • "Advanced Java EE - EJB / JMS / JTA", 2006
    • "Advanced XML and XBRL" 2006-2007
    • "Programming with Microsoft Visual Studio.NET - VB and C#" 2006-2007
    • "AJAX and Web 2.0 Technologies" - 2007
    • "SOA and Web Services" -2007


  4. Many technical articles in PC Actual - the leading computing magazine in Spain, over the course of several years. Among them, the most importants were

    • "Programming Plug & Play Devices" – 1996
    • "Programming Internet Applications With Sockets " – 1996/1997
    • Series of articles "Programming in Java " – 1996/1997
    • Series of articles "Advanced programming with Java " – 1998
    • "Dynamic contents for the web " – 1998
    • "Programming with Lotus Notes 4 " - 1998
    • "Programming ISAPI/NSAPI with Delphi" – 1999

  5. Speaker at the 2nd National Congress of Real Estate Valuation with a lecture about the use of neural networks and statistical multivariant analysis (Business Intelligence) methods for predicting the market value of real estate assets.

  6. "Modern IT Systems " - 1995, published by the Editorial of the National University for Distance Education (UNED)



Career
2000 - To Present

I'm an independant and freelance consultant, specializing in Java technologies. I provide training and consulting services to leading spanish and multinational companies such as KPMG, Bank of Zaragoza, Bank of Santander, Banesto, Atos Origin and others.

Currently, I'm the project manager for the Mobile Number Portability Support System of BT/Spain, as well as project manager for the biometric security systems of SSB.

I'm also an avid software deveoper and experimenter. You can see some of my recent "for-fun" developments in my software projects page.

During 2002-2003 I was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the CNICE Archimedes Project - a joint project by the Education and Science Department and the University of Murcia for the development of an educational TV series aimed at divulging science among kids. I was also charged with the specification and design of the Internet part of that project.


2000

Project Manager at CESCE

Design and development of a system for injecting internationalized messages into existing web applications. The system featured request interception and on-the fly translation of the generated output.

Design and development of a transparent profiler for measuring web application performance and detecting bottlenecks.

Design and development of a java charting and graphing library.


1998 - 1999

Project Manager at Personal Systems Design S.L. (PSD)

As a  Project Manager at PSD, I designed and led the team that implemented the following commercial products

Kryptos – A cryptographic toolkit and library for Delphi/VB. Featured implementations of some of the most important protocols at the time : DES, 3DES, Twofish, Blowfish, stream ciphers with long-period PRNGs, and more.

SourceGuard – A version control system with compliance metrics.

Winproblem – A system for defect/incident tracking and reporting, geared towards ISO 9000 requirements and procedures.

Evolve – A patch creation/distribution system for Windows-based systems.

Under my direction PSD started and implemented a process for software quality assurance as dictated by ISO 9001 and ISO 9000-3


1996-1997

Project Manager at Merca/3 S.A.

An IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system for Dialogic boards and Windows 3.1 for telephone access to database data. The system included TTS (Text-To-Speech) synthesis, DTMF based queries and options like fax-back and voice mail.


Many different applications for Lotus Notes 4.5 - Purchase management, Code Reviews, Quality Audits, etc.

 

External expert at the National University for Distance Education

Simultaneously, visiting teacher at the National University for Distance Education (UNED) in the courses "New Information Technologies I" (1995-1996) and "New Information Technologies II" (1996-1997)

 

Technical Expert at PC Actual.

Many different technical articles for this leading spanish IT journal.


1995

Analyst/Team Lead at Merca/3 S.A.

Design and Implementation of a turnkey real-estate valuation and appraisal system of the Bank of Santander.  As a team lead, I oversaw the substitution of the existing (non-working) system with a completely rewritten one. The project was delivered on time and within the planned cost, resulting in net savings of over 10 million pesetas per year. When I left the project, it was handling all mortgage-related appraisals of the bank (over 500/day), and was accumulating a real-estata database of more than a million items.

Design and Implementation of a real-estate valuation and appraisal system for the official institute of spanish architects.

Design and Implementation of a real-estate valuation and appraisal system for Urquijo Bank


1994

Analyst and Programmer at Merca/3 S.A.

End-to-End system for handling all real-estate information of Madrid for the Centre of Cadastre and Tributary Cooperation of the Ministry of Economy.

End-to-End workflow and administration system for handling real-estate valuations and apprisals for Cohistasa, including remote transmission, digitalization and processing of multimedia documents (real estate photographs, economic data, drawings, etc).

Design and implementation of a similar system for Urquijo Bank, Madrid.

Universal xBase report generator for Merca/3, S.A.


1993

Analyst and Programmer at Merca/3 S.A.

Development of the IT infrastructure of Merca 3, S.A. - including software for automatic transmission of audit results, market studies and real-estate apprisals.

Universal xBase application generator, capable of generating a full dBase/Clipper CRUD application based on screens designed interactively by the user.

 

Simultaneously, on a personal basis

As an experimental project, a multimedia communications terminal software ("Terminaltor II"), winner of the CATACOM'93 software contest, sponsored by Borland, Quarterdeck and Microsoft, in the area "Best communications software". The software (running under MS-DOS), besides the traditional features of the time (xModem/zModem transfers, ANSI terminal emulation, etc) featured a proprietary protocol that allowed the BBSs to present the user a GUI interface and interactive graphics.


Also, as an experimental project, a mathematical graphing program for exploring partial differential equations and systems of PDEs, as part of the "Mathematical method of physics"course of the Complutense University.

 


1992-1991

Freelance programmer

System for control and appraisal of plots of land and real estate properties for Merca/3 S.A.  The system was later used by the land registries of many city halls.

As a personal project, a multimedia hypertext system, winner of the CATACOM'92 contest in the "Best MS-DOS utility" category. The system was later used for one of the first electronic magazines - MicroPress

During two years, SysOp of FantasyBBS - a BBS software developed by me in Turbo Pascal, devoted to programming topics and integrated in the FidoNet and WWIV networks.

Interactive learning tutorials on Turbo Pascal and C for the "Learning" Academy.

Multimedia software featuring text-to-speech synthesis under MS-DOS for helping children learn reading skills, for the "Learning" Academy

Student tracking and control software for CEP - "Centro de Estudios Procesarles".

Also, on a personal basis

Startris game with a humanitarian purpose.


1990

Programmer at Segundamano, S.A

Software for automatic generation and layout of advertisments for PostScript printers.

Maintenance and enhancement of existing systems.

Programmer at ITDPC

Maintenance and optimization of the existing products for composition and layout of the Telex catalogues of ITDPC – International Telex Data Processing Center. Due to the customer's performance requirements, almost all of the existing dBase code (including the database access) was rewritten in assembly, achieving huge performance improvements.


1989

Programmer at ТЕХНОМАТИМПЕКС (Technomatimpex, Bulgaria)

 

1988

Programmer at Software Products & Systems (Bulgaria)

Cyrillic drivers for different products targeted at the USSR market.

Software for real-time control of telex boards.

 


1987

Freelance programmer

CRM system, including sales tracking and reporting, provisioning, accounting, customer managemen, etc., for СП "Микросистеми" (Bulgaria)

Pupil management software for handling pupil data and admission exam results for the English Language School in Sofia (Bulgaria)