Ralph Holland: Development Experience

Period	Role	Application	Technology
2023-04 - 2023-07	software/security engineer	developed a network travel companion/road-warrior dual-channel Wireless Access Point that provides various web-browser configurable router/bridge configurations for connection to motel wired or wireless networks to provide safe www access for mobile equipment while travelling.	debian 11, systemd-networkd, node-js for the web-server raspberry pi
2023-06-25		hosted separate VPN tunnels in office router for mobile devices, office devices, and experimental devices, with associated IP filter rules to provide DMZ isolation from the corporate network and access to the www only for mobile iOs devices, and with other endpoints that can provide access to the corporate network for corporate equipment that can be operated remotely.	Mikrotik Router Os
2022 - current	security engineer	extended the node-js repository mirror with handlers for: Debian apt, node npm, Java mvn, Perl CPAN, R CRAN, Python PyPi, gnu mirrors. (About to investigate a rust cargo mirror.)	Perl, C++ node-js, dynamic HTML css.
2020 - 2022	architect security engineer	Designed and develop declarative measure processing and node-js StatsServer for performance monitoring of a large-scale HPC deployment.	node-js chart.js dynamic HTML
Mar-21	Security engineer Build from source	designed and developed node-js read/write repository server and mirror for Debian apt repositories. Server supports renaming-releases (/<os>/dist/<release>, generating new release, metadata parsers are provided for: .deb, .dsc. Release, Sources, Packages file for metadata analysis. (TBD: Index files to be generated from database on HTTP GET. apt-ftparchive is currently used to regenerate Release files but will be replaced via metadata processing when finalised.) Integrating Build from Source scripts to use the local read/write repository server.	node-js dynamic HTML css
Nov 21	Architect	developed architecture for environmental monitoring using modbus and IP. Solutions: node-red flows and mqtt server - modernising modbus to IoT like provisions.
Oct 21	Architect	designed list processing server to scan security logs and maintain black and white lists that are uploaded by my edge router to block attackers. listsd is written in node-js, and is distributed across various servers and can scan logs such as /var/log/authn.log, /var/log/fail2ban etc to identify attacker IP addresses and maintain lists. mqtt is used to keep white-list and black lists in lock-step asynchronously in each listsd server. The router periodically obtains list deltas or full list via the listsd HTTP server (from any node).
Sep 21	developer	implemented mqttd: a resiliant mqtt service running on Linux	node-js mqtt broker code
Apr 2021 - May 2021	Security Engineer Arising Technology Systems	Evaluated and installed a roll-your-own IP security camera system using a COTS IP camera. I secured the camera network via my edge router connected to Reolink RLC-510/410 IP cameras via a PoE switch and fitted with a Shinobi Open Source (node.js) NVR deployed on an Intel NUC. Shinobi performs motion detection and recording. Security Analysis was performed with Mikrotik router pcap capture and Wireshark for packet inspection. The goal was to detect and then prevent intrusion from the www into the camera systems and network. I have Shinobi, a node.js a software Network Video Recorder running on a dedicated Intel NUC which is also supervised by the watchdog server, along with the security cameras and their PoE network switch. (The next project could be solar panels to power all the IT equipment.)
Feb 2021 - Mar 201	systems engineer / developer	Developed a watchdog server based on a raspberry pi SBC that is used to supervise all my company networking and critical server infrastructure. Equipment is recycled when the equipment cannot be probed. Probes include the network cloud router, network switches, security camera systems, NAS, NTP servers, VTC server, web-servers and other critical infrastructure, including access to DNS. Network equipment is recycled when network connectivity fails. The watchdog server manages the power on 240 V equipment, and reset lines on low power equipment. Equipment was designed with electrical and optical isolation and the relays fail-safe to equipment-on, and resets off. The watchdog server also employs a hardware watchdog timer to ensure the server keeps functioning correctly. This project came about because it became problematic to ring my wife to rectify remote access from airports etc as the amount of critical equipment kept increasing in my home office. technology raspberry pi gpio python bash cron networking
Feb 2021	Researcher	Investigated Lora and LoraWAN.
Nov 97 to present	Managing Director Arising Technology Systems Pty Limited ACN 079 817 342	Information Technology Consultancy. (Enterprise Application Development, C++, Forte, C#, Perl and Java.) GIS development, antenna simulation and firmware design.
Apr 2020	Systems admin	Deployed a self-hosted VTC server (based on jitsi). This was used by my team during covid-19 remote access for correspondence with researchers in the US, instead of using insecure Zoom. This server is fully encrypted, voice and video.
Nov 2018 - present	Defence: High Performance Computer Security Specialist Engineer	HPC Perl, C++, scripting and all sorts of stuff to implements gaols and chroot type compartmentalisation: Redhat Linux.
Nov 2018 - Mar 2019	Consultant	High Performance Computing (HPC), investigating and proving security posture and designing Software Security enforcement tools.
Mar 2018 - Nov 2018	Architect / Developer	Proto-typed http://ir-gis.com/mediawiki/index.php/MapWorld a 3D GIS VR environment.
2018	systems engineer	Developed an NTP server using chrony and GPS derived 1PPS and raspberry pi SBC that are also feeding flightaware data. I did this because I want more accurate time to improve the precision of multilateration for my own experiments, and for my mobile piaware. The network time from these 1PPS receivers is more accurate than the local university ntp pool at ANU. The only improvement I could realise is to use dedicated hardware that has hardware timestamps in the Network Interface Controller chip - which would further assist the NTP algorithms with correction of network propagation delay and jitter.
2016	System Engineer	Deployed a few piaware transceivers for contribution to aircraft multilateration. Raspberry Pi and UHF antenna and Software Defined Radio installation. Oh - one installation also contains web-cam snap-shot and labelling (all done via bash-scripting and linux commands) http://www.flyoz.com.au/n4rc, note the weather overlay - I did that too. (Sorry about the cob-webs reflecting in the IR; the flying school instructor always somehow forget to clean the camera lenses, so I have to fly up to do maintenance - lol). That is a link to a test page that nobody is supposed to look at - I must remove the extra image links - I deleted the delivery of high res images because their new website FTP server was too slow and ruining the upload timings resulting in delayed-time stamps on the images. These images are fed into OzRunways and AvPlan Electronic Flight Book systems for other pilots consumption (hence the advertising).
2016	Developer	Fixed faults in SDR software for piAware. piAware C code.
Apr 2015 – present	Chief Technology Officer, founding director, N4RC Pty Ltd	Hardware and Software ideas shop.
2015	Developer	Developed fixed-point DSP SELCAL encode and decode logic for pic DSP. Aviation and Amateur Radio
2014	RF Engineer	Designed the HF transceiver installation in my aircraft: developed the audio interface circuitry, which included the impedance matching for the microphone input, and its frequency tailoring to eliminate the “boxy” noise caused by the aircraft engine, and designed the audio output impedance matching all with passive components to avoid failure modes. Designed the placement of the antenna and antenna-tuner and the routing of all cables, and the transceiver grounding to minimize interference by and to/with the aircraft avionics. I even designed the antenna shackle mounting arrangement and the stringer-doubler plate with a strain relief rivet to avoid aircraft skin cracking around the feed-through insulator. Radio communications and electronics.
2011	Engineer	Designer of Seven-of-nine, a Covert Passive Collector for aircraft multi-lateralisation position reporting. (This was designed before the mandate for mode-ES - aircraft extended squitters and before I adopted flightaware.) Hardware UHF Analogue to Digital (direct) receiver and associated digital processing. No local oscillators – to keep it covert.
2011 - ongoing	Software Architect	Designed and developed IR-GIS ® MapView for displaying vehicle positions, and IR-GIS ® Historical Pullback Server for recording position reports and attributed text in real-time for historical recall and display in MapView. All developed in Java (highly concurrent and performant).
Nov 2009 – 2010	Product Owner	Product Owner (Business Analyst and Customer Representative) for a team of 5 using Agile Scrum development. Defence.
2011	Architect/Senior Developer	Developed maritime trackers in Java (after having developed Aviation trackers to cope with 20 seconds of jitter using Kalman filters).
Nov 2006 - Jul 2017	Senior Developer for Production Systems Defence	Signal processing (C++), Protocol extraction (C++), Estimation and Correlation (Java), Regression Test-bed development (Java, Ant, Junt, Sql-unit, Cobertura, eclipse RCP and Cruise Control), World Projections (C++). GIS (ESRI), Google KML, and then http://ir-gis. Air Traffic Network decoding of position reports and telex, multi-headed radar fusion and dynamic earth model adjustments.
2013 - 2017	Senior Security Developer	Attribute Based Access Control systems Java.
2010	Senior Developer	Regression Test Bed design and implementation (Java.)
2009	Senior Developer	Developed Kalman filters for tracking aircraft with up to 20 seconds of jitter (Java real-time processing).
Oct 2005 to Nov 2006	Support specialist	metadata (SQL) and application dev. (C)
Nov 2002 to Oct 2005	Senior Developer/Architect	Centrelink, Canberra. JavaScript, Forte, DHTLM, XSLT, Java, Enterprise web applications.
Nov 2001 - Nov 2002	Senior Developer	DFAT, Forte 4GL (3.0N.9) migration from Unix to Windows 2000/NT and some C++ support.
Mar 2001 – Nov 2001	Forte Mentor and Senior Developer	Framework Architect, Performance Analyst - Technology Partners Group.Forte Web Enterprise, Forte 4GL/UDS, XML, DOM, Forte/UDS, some html and Java script.
Jan 2000 – Mar 2000	Architect and Senior Developer	for Thelma, a health-based Java E-commerce project deployed at ICS global (Sydney), whilst consulting to Technology Partners Group, Newcastle. Java B2B E-commerce development with JRun application server, Oracle JBuilder and Oracle 8i.
Nov 2000 - Dec 2000	Performance Consultant	CSC Australia Melbourne E-tag tollway project. Forte 4GL middleware on a Sun Cluster (using Oracle 8i)
May 1998 – Oct 2000	Senior Developer and OOD mentor	deployed at DFAT by BHP-IT. Rational Rose UML/RUP, Forte 4GL middleware, C++, C and scripting languages.
Sep 1997 – Mar 1998	Senior Developer/Team Leader	Network Protocol and Framework Architect, Air Data Technologies. Embedded Radio Network for remote power metering.
Sep 1997 – 1998	Embedded Communication System designer	developed portable communication protocols for support over MOBITEX and TETRA radio protocols, Air Data Technologies. Embedded processors and radio networking.
1997	Systems Engineer/RF Engineer	Contributed to a small part of the design of Anzac phased-array radar system (while at CEA) by suggesting that mixed-polarisation was required, because circularly polarized signals are reflected back at the opposite polarisation due to the reflection boundary. Antenna theory
1996 – 1997	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Numerous HF antenna designs and installations that have been published and in use world-wide Amateur Radio.
Oct 1995 – Sep 1997	Senior Systems Engineer	CEA Technologies. Mine Hunter communication’s system (hardware).
1995 - 1997	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Designed and built axial mode helical antennas for NVIS. (Research project at CEA Technologies.) Amateur Radio.
1997	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Built and designed common-mode rejection baluns and filters for LF through to HF. Amateur Radio
1996	Sys Eng	Developed FPLA generated RFDS SELCAL. Electronics.
1996	System Engineer (rf)	Proposed the broad-band RX antenna design for the Mine Hunter.
1996	System Engineer (rf)	Proposed the broad-band VHF-UHF TX antenna design for the Mine hunter.
1996	System Engineer (rf)	Proposed the omni-directional SATCOM antenna design for the Minehunter.
1996	System Engineer (rf)	Contributed to the design of the hi-dynamic range common-mode-rejection differential amplifiers for the Mine Hunter broad-band receive antenna.
Jan 1996	System Engineer (software)	Debugged the firmware for one of the CEA Technology Software Defined radios (it took me 10 minutes to read the instruction set and 15 minutes to fix it) – the engineer trying to get this to work was causing a floating-point overflow which was causing the DSP to reset and the I/Q audio recovery to have clicks (each time the processor reset). DSP assembly language
Nov 1996	Project Manager	Integration of Compucat Maritime Message Switch into the Mine Hunter Communication’s system
1996	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Sailor ATU 1500 modifications, Amateur Radio magazine, 1996.
1995	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	ATU Modification for the Kenwood TS440-S/AT, Amateur Radio magazine, November 1995.
Nov 1995 – Sep 2007	Systems Engineer	Developed code that performed cable sizing and least-path placement for the Mine Hunter power and signal buses.
Nov 1995 – Sep 2007	Systems Engineer	Sourced components and designed the Mine Hunter telephone hybrid circuit for land-line to ships coms connection. Mine Hunter communication bus telephone interface. CEA Technologies
Nov 1995 – Sep 1997	System Engineer (rf)	Simulated the HF antenna on the Mine Hunter for near-field verification that common-mode choke placements were required on Mine Hunter communication bus and wiring. Antenna Simulation (Java and FORTRAN) Mine Hunter Systems Engineering.
Nov 1994 – Oct 1995	Flix Group Manager, Designer and Developer	Proprietary 5GL database project (implemented in Pascal).
Nov 1993 - 1994	Software Architect / Project Manager	Developed the replacement (portable) Compucat Maritime Message Switch, thus familiar with defence messaging, C++ et al. ACP-127, Link-11 and Link-16 etc.
1994	Architect	Proprietary Exception replacement mechanism (C++). Architect proprietary memory allocation routines (Pascal) and Memory allocation for microprocessors and IBM/PCs (C++) Compucat Pt Ltd.
Nov 1993 – Nov 1994	Project Manager	Compucat Pty Limited. Protocol, Storage and Interface Architect. Compucat’s first C++ and Object Oriented Development. Also first project certified under AS3901.
Oct 1989 – Nov 1993	Research Engineer / Senior Analyst Programmer	Compucat Pty Limited. C, Pascal, C++ on Windows, Solaris and Unix platforms.
Aug 1993 – Nov 1993	Research Engineer / Senior Analyst Programmer	Developed Fixed and Floating point to integer processor libraries and Z-buffering graphics rendering. Compucat Fleetwork Trainer.
1993	Architect	Event-driven Multitasking environment for Borland Pascal DOS applications - used as a basis for Fleet Work Trainer program Compucat Pascal/Assembly language
1993	Architect	micro-second precision Event Monitor and program performance metering for PC compatibles). Compucat. Pascal and IBM pc Assembly language
Aug 1993 – Nov 1993	Project Controller/Team Leader/Architect	Fleetwork Trainer (used by the RAN and NZ Navy), Compucat. Pascal and Proprietary motion engine. Assembly language.
1990 – 2000	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Implemented various antenna tuning techniques, including modification to military and ships surplace equipment. Amateur Radio
1990 – 1995	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Simulated antennas and verified them by building; my specialty was compact and elevated HF ground-plane antennas and NVIS. I have several publications in this regard, and one publication in a per-reviewed paper validating NEC-2D (which was reviewed by the NEC-2D author as it turns out). Amateur Radio
1991	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Designed and developed un-powered Voice Activated switches for transceivers, and transceiver links using transformers and MOSFETs that operated without external power supplies. Amateur Radio
1990	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Designed and developed compact 160 m HF antennas for mobile use. Amateur Radio
1990	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Obtained unrestricted (full call advanced) Amateur Licence VK1BRH. Morse Code and advanced Radio theory.
Jan 1986 – Oct 1986	Technical Liaison Officer	deployed at Prime R&D Boston MA, by Prime R&D Australia. Proprietary operating system (PRIMOS). Development languages: FORTRAN, PL1/G, SPL, Assembly language and INFO/BASIC.
1986	Architect	Designed and developed a new Database interpreter for Prime INFORMATION (PMA) which achieved up to 6 times performance improvement. Prime R&D. Prime 32R Assembly Language
1984 – Oct 1989	Senior Software Engineer	Team Leader, Performance Analyst, Prime R&D Australia. Proprietary operating system (PRIMOS) (based on Multix – the precursor of Unix.) Development languages: FORTRAN, PL1/G, SPL, Assembly language and INFO/BASIC. Proprietary INFORMATION 4GL database.
1982	Software Engineer	Developed their BASIC interpreter (C), a PDP-11 emulator (PMA), a Z80 emulator (PMA) - using Prime Assembly Language and C language.
1980	Architect	Architect of a Semaphore-based operating system for PRIMOS subsequently used for teaching at the NSWIT. FORTRAN IV and PLP
1980 – 1984	Tutor	NSWIT (now University of Technology), Broadway Sydney. Mini Pascal compiler (Pascal), BNF table driven parser (C), Table-driven diss-assembler (PLP), Ada subset compiler (PL1/G), Academic environment tutoring for wide range of subjects including, Mathematics, Assembly languages, Languages and Processors (compiler theory), Network Analysis, Micro-controller laboratory etc.
1980	Teacher	Qualified NSW Science and Mathematics teacher, Department of Education. Physics, Chemistry, Computing.
1980	Amatuer Radio Hobbyist	Designed and published high-impedance RF buffer amplifiers circuit so I could signal-trace and tune all the oscillators in a HF transceiver that I repaired – without loading the oscillators. Amateur Radio and Electronics
1978	Amateur Radio Hobbyist	Obtained Amateur Call sign VK2ZZB. Built amplifiers, transmitters and some transceivers. Electronics and Radio theory.
1975	Electronics Hobbyist	Developed V.21 frequency shift-keying 600 baud phone modem, plus V.22 1200 baud tape modem. Electronics and Computing
1972	Electronics Hobbyist	Rewound a 250 volt laboratory variac that had some burnt-out turns on the later half of the winding. Electronics
1970	Electronics Hobbyist	Designed switch-mode Triac power-supplies (regulating the primary main-supply side of the transformer). Electronics
1970	Amateur Astronomer	Designed and developed a variable frequency inverter drive for synchronous motors used for astronomical telescope tracking. Electronics.
1970	Electronics Hobbyist	Developed Buck and Boost switch-mode power-supplies before the advent of “jungle” chips. Electronics.
1969	Electronics Hobbyist	Rewound a power drill motor armature – because my father's drill blew-up and he said I can have it if I fixed it, and then he showed me how to fix it (my dad was an electrical turner and fitter by trade). Electro-mechanical.
1967	Electronics Hobbyist	Designed 400 Watt adjustable linear power supply for my father using a large TV transformer and my own-regulator design. Voltage would only boost up by a faction of a volt under a 30 amp load due to the compensation and voltage sense in my regulator design. Electronics,
1966	Electronics Hobbyist	Rewinding valve TV mains transformers for power supplies that I designed. Electronics.
1961	Hobbyist	Light and Morse Key circuit soldered at home direct to batteries and switches etc and taken to school. My father made me a soldering iron and taught me to solder at an early age.