[logo-128.png] Erik Max Francis
San Jose, CA, USA
   EMAIL [1]max-resume@alcyone.com
     WEB [2]http://www.alcyone.com/
LINKEDIN [3]/in/erikmaxfrancis/
 TWITTER [4]@erikmaxfrancis
  JABBER erikmaxfrancis
   SKYPE erikmaxfrancis
 UPDATED 2023 Dec 24
  __________________________________________________________________

OBJECTIVE

To obtain gainful employment in a challenging position at a
forward-looking company, utilizing my particular skills and talents
under a Unix, Linux, Unix-like, or platform-agnostic environment. I'm
passionate about learning and particularly enjoy building complex
software from scratch.

SKILLS

  * Programming languages: C++, C, Python
  * Operating systems: Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and other
    Unix-like operating systems (both System V and BSD)
  * Other languages: APL/J, BASIC, Forth, Go, Haskell, Io, Java,
    JavaScript, Common Lisp, Emacs Lisp, Logo, Mathematica,
    Objective-C, Pascal, Perl, PostScript, Prolog, Tcl, Scheme
  * Tools: Bourne-like shells (sh, bash, zsh) and shell utilities, gcc,
    gdb, GNU Make, Ninja, emacs, m4, awk, sed, telnet, ssh, rsync,
    wget, curses, screen, gnuplot, CVS, SVN, Perforce, git, Bugzilla,
    Jira, Confluence, Status Hero, Trello, Apache, sendmail,
    qmail/ezmlm, procmail, BIND, named, tinydns, X Window System, ctwm,
    sawfish, GNOME, Netpbm
  * Technologies: TCP, UDP, HTML/XHTML, HTTP, SSI, CGI, XML, RSS, Atom,
    SVG, JSON, Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, wikitext, LaTeX,
    RTF, PDF, SMTP, NNTP, DNS, SSL/TLS, CORBA, SQL & SQLite3, OpenGL,
    Canvas, jQuery, Unicode, IRC, XMPP, Slack, POSIX threads, regular
    expressions, client/server networking, object orientation
    (including patterns), domain-specific languages, system
    administration, system security, API design
  * Python technologies: pydoc, PyPy, Medusa/asyncore, PIL/Pillow,
    NumPy/Numeric, BeautifulSoup, PyOpenGL, pygame, docutils, Python 2
    vs. 3 compatibility
  * DevOps: agile programming; unit, integration, and system testing;
    continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD);
    microservices and containers (Docker, LXC, etc.); infrastructure as
    code; configuration management
  * Advanced concepts: analytic geometry; differential, integral,
    vector and tensor calculus; linear algebra; statistics; predicate
    calculus; physics (classical mechanics and quantum mechanics,
    special and general relativity); astronomy; astrophysics;
    artificial neural networks; machine learning; cellular automata;
    Lindenmayer systems; finite state machines; genetic algorithms and
    genetic programming; evolutionary computation; fractals; artificial
    life
  * Writing: technical documentation, how-to, non-fiction, technical
    advice on popular science fiction novels

WORK EXPERIENCE

Stealth startup (distributed)
Senior Software Engineer.                   (2015-2019)

Designed and implemented the architecture for a highly-extensible
multiplayer game server in Python, designed to serve thousands of
simultaneous players per shard. Designed domain-specific language for
specifying the world and configuration. Advised and assisted on world
and puzzle design. Worked under heavy NDA for stealth startup.
Telecommuted.

Ultimate Gaming, Inc. [formerly CyberArts, Inc.] (Emeryville, CA)
Senior Software Engineer. (2003-2014)

Designed, implemented and maintained a highly-multithreaded poker
server as part of a server suite for a next-generation online gaming
platform, CyberArts Foundation, written in Standard C++ under Linux.
Handled the full lifecycle from design, implementation, bugfixing,
release, through to maintenance. Was personally and solely responsible
for all poker game logic and user interface associated with the poker
table, given an extremely thin and portable (Windows, Macintosh, Flash)
client. Engineered the server to be very modular, easily accommodating
the addition of new poker variants, resulting in a poker gaming
platform offering the widest variety available in the market. Designed
the system to be fully localizable and skinnable from a data-driven
source. Assisted with the design and structure of the XML-based
client-server protocol, as well as the architecture of Foundation, the
full server suite. Advised on the design of the other server
components, including the CORBA interfaces and SQL schemas needed for
their interactions. Assisted with the creation of a Game Developers
Kit, allowing customers to independently write their own games. Helped
with user interface design. Delivered stable software with very long
uptimes, even initially with no dedicated quality assurance resources.
Met demands for customization and feature requests for numerous
customers with aggressive, rapidly-changing, and often overlapping
schedules. Wrote a high-performance client library in Python for
testing the server through the use of bots, as well as for other ad hoc
tools. Achieved hightened performance through multiple forked
asynchronous (event-based) cores able to run high-level scripts using
threads. Wrote emulator for backward compatibility with legacy Python
scripts. Designed and implemented the Player Segmentation Module API
designed to allow administrators to efficiently specify groups of
players through well-defined criteria. Created a domain-specific
language to specify these criteria, which would compile the queries to
actual SQL queries and wrappers. Used SQL optimization techniques to
make the queries efficient despite their sometimes high complexity.
Integrated an XMPP client library and exposed an XMPP API for
developers. Switched over to agile methodologies and converted the
poker server to support a later thick HTML5 client using a JSON-based
protocol. Also performed technical interviews. Joined the company as
employee number 4 under NDA for the first year as part of a stealth
startup. Telecommuted.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (San Jose, CA)
Computer Scientist/Senior Computer Scientist.             (2000-2001, 2003–2004)

Ported the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) core engine written in C++ to
Linux and Solaris (from Windows and Macintosh), making possible the SVG
Linux viewer for Mozilla. Implemented and maintained a company-wide,
portable (Linux, Solaris, Windows, Macintosh) API for SVG rendering and
importing, utilized by multiple Adobe applications, including
Illustrator and Photoshop. Ported an automated build validation tool
written in Python to Linux and Solaris, which ran against every change
entered into source control. Wrote an automated test system in Python
to render a suite of test files and interactively display differences
from the blessed testcases through a simple GUI. Provided expertise in
C and C++ Standards conformance and portability. Partially
telecommuted.

Later, returned to the Advanced Technology Group, and designed and
implemented SVG Renderer, a portable (Linux, Solaris, Windows,
Macintosh) Python application using the SVG core library, in order to
render SVG documents to a variety of image formats via the Python
Imaging Library. Created the application to be used as a standalone
rasterizing utility; an HTTP server which, when provided an SVG
document via a POST query, would rasterize the document and respond
with the resulting image; as an HTTP client that would interact with an
SVG Renderer server, and locally manipulating the resulting rasterized
image; and as a Python module. Telecommuted.

Adobe Systems, Inc. (San Jose, CA)
Computer Scientist.                        (1995-1998)

Quickly and simultaneously learned the Illustrator 5.5 and 6.0 plugin
API (Macintosh), the latter of which was under heavy development at the
time. Worked with a small team to obtain basic testing of the entire
API of over 500 calls, as well as depth and applied testing over the
most important calls, including several complete plugin features. Also
developed a rapid prototype in Java for a research project which
converted Illustrator documents to class files runnable as browser
applets. Later, developed and maintained internal functionality and
plugins for Illustrator 7.0 and 8.0 (Windows and Macintosh) in C and
C++. Responsibilities included general rasterizing libraries, raster
file formats (most prominently GIF and JPEG), Web features (including
hyperlinks and imagemaps), Smart Guides, and transformation and shape
tools.

RELEVANT ACTIVITIES

  * Open source contributor, including numerous Python modules and
    applications available at [5]http://www.alcyone.com/, including:
       + [6]CAGE, a cellular automata library,
       + [7]chess, a chess moves adjudicator,
       + [8]fauxident, an identd security system,
       + [9]uid, a customizable unique ID generator,
       + [10]BOTEC, an astronomical and astrodynamics library,
       + [11]ZOE, an OpenGL-based 3D graphics engine for rapid
         prototyping and visualization, and
       + [12]EmPy, a powerful templating system used widely enough that
         is available as a system package for most Linux distributions;
         a revamped major version (4.0) was released in late 2023
         (2001-)
  * Freelance technical writer; wrote two articles for [13]Linux
    Journal (1999-)
  * Offered pre-publication scientific and literary comments on the
    novels Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar by Gregory Benford and Larry
    Niven (2010-2013)
  * Contributor to The Hanford Consortium, a volunteer bandwidth
    cooperative of system administrators and software engineers
    supporting a set of servers running Linux, Solaris, IRIX, OpenBSD,
    and NetBSD (2001-)

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