Thomas Wilkinson
Career Objectives:
To work as part of a team administering servers on a medium sized or larger network including the support of services to a general user base, whether this is specific to a single organisation or providing a more general service over the Internet.
Key Skills and Technologies:
- 3 years Linux administration experience including Red Hat / Fedora Core and Slackware
- 3 years Systems administration experience including Apache, Sendmail and BIND
- 5 years HTML design, including XHTML 1.1 and CSS2
- 2 years programming and debugging web applications, mainly in PHP and Perl
I also have several years experience in the use and administration of Microsoft Windows as well as programming experience in a number of languages including C, Java, ML, Visual Basic and basic Unix shell scripting.
Employment History:
July 2001 - Present: Support Team Leader (3rd Line)
Business Serve, Plc. http://www.businessserve.co.uk
When initially hired as a Support Engineer, my duties at Business Serve (then Designer Servers) included supporting clients' use of the provided Virtual Servers. This involved use and support of Apache, Sendmail, Exim, the BIND name server software, PHP, Perl, MySQL and PostgreSQL in addition to more general Linux administration. In addition I wrote and am still responsible for editing a large number of support documents which are available as part of the clients' on-line help system.
In July 2004 I was promoted to the position of Support Team Leader. In this role I am responsible for the day-to-day management of an eight-strong team whose role is to support the above technologies and handle escalated problems from the first and second line support teams elsewhere in the company in addition to the duties listed above. I am also responsible for handling complaints about how a customer has been treated by Support Team members.
As part of the Support role, I am required to be on call on at least one night per week. This involves being available on a 24-hour basis to deal with systems outages. These range between those affecting a single customer to system-wide networking and service problems. I have also recently taken on a more involved role in systems maintenance. This has involved working late nights and very early mornings performing preventative maintenance and installing new servers.
August 2000 - Present: Freelance Writer
Sole client: Future Publishing, Ltd. http://www.futurenet.co.uk/
As a freelancer writing for Linux Format magazine, I have been commissioned to write articles and reviews for inclusion in the magazine since early in the publication's life. These have included reviews of both freely distributable and commercial distributions from major vendors including Mandrake, SUSE and Red Hat as well as textbooks on different aspects of Linux use and administration. My most recent article was a 6-page (5500 word) comparison of various text editors.
Some of my articles are available for download from the web, from two separate addresses. The Archives section of http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/ contains my reviews of SuSE Firewall and WinLinux 2000. Assorted other articles are also available from http://www.dentrassi.net/writing/. These articles are in their pre-publication state before sub-editing.
July 2000 - June 2001: IT Assistant
Tysons Medical and Industrial Healthcare
Initially hired to design and prototype a website promoting a range of supports and other aids for members of the public suffering from sporting injuries, my role expanded to include the development of the company's first electronic ordering system and the training of members of the permanent staff in updating prices on the site as well as the secure retrieval of orders.
During my final year at university my role was continued part-time and my responsibilities expanded to include the day-to-day administration of a small Windows network including file and printer sharing and scheduling backups. I also developed a basic database-driven contact management system for us by the Sales department.
July 2000: BBC Futureworld Exhibition
Manchester Science and Industry Museum
As an unpaid volunteer, I spent a weekend working at the museum prototyping a Linux workstation that could be showcased at the exhibition, offering similar or greater functionality than that offered by the equivalent Windows kiosk machines. This involved the installation of Mandrake Linux on a machine with proprietary hardware, and the installation of software guards. These could be used to prevent users from accessing inappropriate content.
Education
September 1998 - June 2001: Manchester University
BSc (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence
Core modules included the study of Robotics, Neural Nets and Natural Language processing as well as programming in a variety of paradigms using C, Java and SML.
September 1996 - June 1998: Scarborough Sixth Form College
A-Levels: 4 A-Levels including Mathematics and Physics
Interests and Hobbies
While a student I served as Acting President of the University of Manchester Science Fiction Society for six months, in addition to serving as the group's Publicity Officer. I continue to be an associate member of the society today.I also enjoy reading science fiction novels, particularly enjoying the works of the British author Peter F. Hamilton, and the late Frank Herbert. I am also interested in films, regularly attending new releases in the cinema as well as owning a large collection of films on DVD. I particularly enjoy the work of Tim Burton, though my favourite film is Gattaca.
During my leisure time, I am also currently learning the Russian language.
Contact Details
E-mail: tom (at) dentrassi dot net
Other details on request
Other information
I have a full clean UK driving licence
I would be happy to provide references on request.
