Tom Howard

Current

Senior Analyst Programmer at National Australia Bank
Integration Contractor at Windy Road (Sole Proprietorship)

Past

Senior Consultant at GLiNTECH
IT Consultant at IBM
AI Programmer at Team Bondi

Volunteer Project Leader and Software Engineer at The RoboCup Federation
Support Engeneer at TIBCO Software
Software Engineer at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Systems

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3 more...

Education

Macquarie University

Recommended

5 people have recommended Tom

Connections

98 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Websites

Website: http://windyroad.org

Tom Howard’s Summary

With a primary focus in software development, my career started as a C++ Software Engineer in the Applied Artificial Intelligence Program at the CSIRO. 2 years later, in order to extend my career with international experience, I was sponsored and relocated to the UK by TIBCO software, the world leader in enterprise application integration software.
Within the two years I spent with TIBCO in the UK, I became the most senior TIBCO Rendezvous support engineer in EMEA. This was followed by two years in the same role for TIBCO Australia, where I was the most senior TIBCO Rendezvous support engineer in Asia Pacific and became the first non-US based developer on the TIBCO Rendezvous engineering team.
In 2004, an opportunity to do C++ development in an artificial intelligence role for games company proved too much to resist and I joined Team Bondi, where I finally put to task the development skills I had been maintaining and extending on open source projects since I left the CSIRO.
A year later, on the recommendation from an old TIBCO colleague, I returned to application integration work, firstly at IBM and most recently at GLiNTECH. Since then I have been back doing serious work and I have been taking full advantage of my TIBCO knowledge and development skills to the benefit of the projects to which I am assigned.

Tom Howard’s Specialties:

C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Bourne Shell Scripting, MS DOS Scripting, (X)HTML, Javascript, AJAX/Comet, CSS, GNU Autotools, CVS, CMake, Qt, Zlib, PGP, Awk & Sed, Bison & Flex, TIBCO Rendezvous, TIBCO Business Works, TIBCO Integration Manager, TIBCO Turbo XML, TIBCO Adapter for Active Databases, TIBCO General Interface, TIBCO Business Events.

Tom Howard’s Experience

Senior Analyst Programmer

National Australia Bank

(Public Company; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2008 — Present (1 year 9 months)
Integration Contractor
Windy Road (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Information Technology and Services industry)

March 2008 — Present (1 year 10 months)
Senior Consultant

GLiNTECH

(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)

January 2007 — March 2008 (1 year 3 months)

Comprising of a Team Lead, Lead Developer and Architect duties, this role has focused on the development of an end of day market rates processing platform for a large financial institution.
The primary technologies and languages used during this role are: TIBCO Business Events; TIBCO Business Works; TIBCO EMS; TIBCO General Interface; MS SQL Server; Hibernate, Java, XSLT, JavaScript, SQL, Web Services
IT Consultant

IBM

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry)

October 2005 — January 2007 (1 year 4 months)

This role has required a number of activities, varying from bid & proposal work, application design, performance & systems integration testing, application development, test script development and execution.

The majority of my work has focused on TIBCO based applications and systems, such as custom TIBCO Adapters, TIBCO Adapter for Active Databases, TIBCO Integration Manager Processes and RVRDs.

The role has also consisted of design and development work for a complex web application, integrated with existing back-end systems (TIBCO based and XML over HTTP based) and using advanced techniques, such as AJAX.
AI Programmer

Team Bondi

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Games industry)

August 2004 — October 2005 (1 year 3 months)

This role involved the creation of a NavMesh based path finding system in C++; The system implemented created the NavMesh directly from the game geometry, rather than requiring manual inputs or adjustments.

Path extraction from the NavMesh involved a novel implementation of the A* search algorithm, which yielded accurate point to point path finding. Previously existing NavMesh path extraction techniques only yielded less accurate area to area paths.

Additionally, work was also performed on developing behaviours for non-player characters with in city landscapes (walking along footpaths, crossing roads, entering buildings, etc), with the goal being have hundreds of such characters within view performing realistic tasks and replicating the busy nature of a large city. This required developing complex behaviours based on very simple calculations, in order to maintain scalability.
Volunteer Project Leader and Software Engineer

The RoboCup Federation

(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Research industry)

August 1999 — August 2005 (6 years 1 month)

This role involves leading the updating, debugging and extension of the RoboCup Soccer Simulator, which used in the simulation league of the RoboCup competition; An international scientific effort designed to further the development of artificial intelligence.

The development of the simulator is performed in union with other volunteers located internationally, primarily communicating via email.

The simulator is written in C++ on the Linux and OS X platforms, with on ongoing effort to port to the Windows platform.
Support Engeneer

TIBCO Software

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; TIBX; Information Technology and Services industry)

March 2001 — August 2004 (3 years 6 months)

This role primarily involved providing advanced support to TIBCO customers and partners for the TIBCO Rendezvous software product. This required rapid learning and deep understanding of the TIBCO Rendezvous product, it’s components and how they are used by other TIBCO products.

Issued handled varied from configuration issues, API usage (C, C++, Java) and defect detection, all on a variety of platforms (Windows, Solaris, HP-UX and Linux).

In my last few months with TIBCO I also put in charge of developing and maintaining rvcache, a TIBCO Rendezvous component, written in C. Primarily this involved finding and correcting previously reported defects, while liaising with the other TIBCO Rendezvous developers located in California.

During this time I have also provided support for issues relating to TIBCO Business Works, TIBCO Adapter SDK, TIBCO Adapter for Active Database and TIBCO Smart Sockets.
Software Engineer

CSIRO Mathematical and Information Systems

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 1999 — February 2001 (1 year 11 months)

This role included the development of a RoboCup Simulation League team (CybeRoos) in coordination with other CMIS team members. This research project involved developing autonomous software agents in C++ for the Linux and Solaris platforms. The agents were required to make intelligent decisions in real-time, with limited and noisy data in a complex multi-agent system.

The CybeRoos have performed well in international competition, achieving 2nd in the Pacific Rim and 9th overall in the 2000 and 2001 World Cups. The RoboCup project resulted my in co-authorship of three papers, detailing the research developed during this project.

The position also involved software development for a commercial project with Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA). The role required extending in C++ on Windows, a prototype demonstrating
intelligent networked digital appliances in co-ordination with CMIS and CISRA team members. This work currently is commercial-in-confidence.