My CV

RUTH IVIMEY-COOK

A professional, customer-focussed Software Engineer, Project Leader and Technical Product Manager with a track record of problem resolution and of turning projects around. Extensive knowledge from 22 years in IT in a wide variety of sectors including: Printing Industry, Computer Machine Control, Processor manufacture. Wide knowledge of systems planning, design and implementation, training and technical writing. An excellent communicator with 2½ years Product Management experience and certification from Pragmatic Marketing.

SKILLS TAG CLOUD

Project Leader - Product Manager - Business Plans - Senior Software Engineer - Market Research - C - C++ - C# - J# - Java - .NET - MFC - Qt - Visual Basic 6 - VB.NET - MS Project - MS Office - Visual Studio 2003 - Visual Studio 2005 - Visual Studio 2008 - Visual Studio 2010 - Eclipse - Software Systems Design - InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop - Program Architecting - User Interface Design - Technical Writing - Training - Documentation - Brochure Creation - Newsletter Production - Customer Contact - Procurement - Website Design - Drupal - HTML - PHP - Perl - Databases - MySQL - MS-SQL - Apache HTTP - VSFTP server - Exim - Internet protocols (e.g. SMTP, HTTP, DNS) - Protocol Design - Debugging - Hardware Interfacing - ARM architecture - ARM assembly - 68k assembly - Low-level Software - Embedded Systems - Device Drivers - Business Intelligence (QlikView) - Research - MacOS X - Win32 - Windows - Fedora Linux Administration - Linux Development - GCC - Unix (HP-UX, Solaris 5, SunOS, ...) - Filesystem Design - Operating System Principles - Data Structure Design - SVN/Subversion - SCCS - RCS/CVS - Printing Systems - PostScript Language - PDF - Colour Profiling - Colour Science - Inkjet Printers - Occam - CSP - Multi-process Systems - Multi-processor Systems - Threading Models - Cached Systems - NUMA/Heterogeneous Systems

COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS

  • Selling and Influencing: Experience of creating proposals for products and processes and soliciting assistance for business goals. For example at Global Graphics, chairing a product steering group with other senior managers to identify new product opportunities and assess their suitability and feasibility. 
  • Technical: Highly experienced programmer. Many software engineering methods and tools. See Skills above.
  • Commercial: A problem-solver, both in process and system terms, constantly looking for better and more efficient solutions. Experience writing business analyses and business plans, including web and interview research as required. Experience in several application areas with proven ability to assimilate the pertinent aspects of new areas quickly and effectively, including:
    • Colour inkjet printing (RIPs Raster Image Processors)
    • Processor emulation and virtualisation software
    • Business accounting systems
    • Share trading systems
    • Processor debuggers
    • Bare-metal embedded systems
    • Machine control (CNC - Computer Numerical Control)
  • Business: Adept at forward thinking, planning and consideration of the customer and business requirements in planning development activity. Experience communicating with senior business managers at their level, and able to restate technical issues as required. A VP Marketing wrote of me "Ruth has been a pleasure to work with, is very detail orientated, organized, and completes tasks on time. Her ability to understand specifications, ability to prototype solutions helps shorten the normal sales cycle. Products developed by Ruth always meet or beat expectations."
  • Leadership and Teambuilding: Experience leading teams and motivating them. Able to plan, implement and deliver small and large projects to definite satisfaction of senior managers. A team or project leader at many of the companies worked for, including both the first (EASAMS) and the most recent (Global Graphics). Experience of site visits, planning, presentations and courses.
  • People Management: Communications at all levels, motivating, encouraging, coaching, training and development, influencing, conflict management, identifying individuals" strengths, facilitating and building trust.
  • Decision Making: Ideas development, forward planning, research, analysis and evaluation, problem solving and resolution, integrated management, business objectives focused. A cooperative style, but can exert authority as needed. A senior ex-colleague says on LinkedIn "Ruth is a very capable software engineer with vision and high level understanding ... a rare commodity these days."
  • Communication: Communication is ingrained; A passionate belief that effective communication is at the heart of a modern business, striving to achieve that wherever possible. Effective email and written communications both internally and externally, and not afraid of seeking a second opinion where appropriate. Two years experience as a professional technical author gave me insight into a new style of communication, which has been very useful.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER

Searching for a new opportunity

April 2011 to present. On the web and through networking and other means.

Business Networking / Product R&D

September 2010 to March 2011

I have been looking at starting a business to create an advanced microcontroller product, consisting of software and hardware components. I researched this by attending several exhibitions to talk to potential users and retailers, and by visiting local groups. I also networked with local small business groups to validate the business model and seek advice in developing the business plan.

I created a prototype circuit diagram to construct cost estimates and identify suitable technologies, and talked to an electronics firm who were willing to take that outline design and build it. I also created a 3D model of the platform to show potential users so I could seek feedback on the design. I looked at the algorithmic elements, primarily to create estimates of software development effort and verify that the proposed hardware was capable of delivering the (real-time) results.

Following this it became clear that although there was an enthusiastic market for the product, the development costs exceeded the short-term market potential by a sufficient margin that it was not viable, so the product has, for the moment at least, been mothballed.

Training

June 2010 I decided to pursue Product Management and identified that the Pragmatic Marketing course was well thought of. Booked and funded a trip to Boston to do it; I am now Pragmatic Marketing Certified.

Global Graphics Software Ltd

September 2006 to April 2010 Software for printing and electronic document solutions. Creator of Harlequin RIP. Software Engineer and Team Leader Work involves input and output plugins and contributing to the product management process. Project management.

  • Product and Project managed over 20 software products throughout their 2 to 3 year life.
  • Regularly negotiated with other managers and staff for their time to enable the completion of projects.
  • Responsible for deciding which projects to undertake: both maintenance of current applications/tools and design of new applications.
  • Re-architected software modules to enable the integration of new technologies while maintaining existing product compatibility with those modules.
  • Worked hard to gain knowledge of a specialised industry sector as commercial manager and software engineer, resulting in a senior product manager being confident in my ability to guide development within 6 months of starting.
  • Produced business analysis to ensure that documentation and requirements analysis were standardised. This resulted in increased productivity and quality.
  • Attended an important developer conference as the company representative responsible for future products.
  • Assistant to the Senior Colour Scientist with profiling and colour management.
  • Ensured that products were delivered on time through analysing and identifying problems and solving them.
  • Created and maintained QlikView application to analyse product sales data as input to my product management process and to support reporting to others and created datasheets for the Marketing department.

Stuga Ltd

April 2005 to June 2006 CNC Machine manufacturer for the Window Industry Project Management, Development Created detailed engineering specifications for machine control software.

  • Documented an existing product and consequently contracted to design, manage and develop its successor.
  • Delivered a tested, documented code at over 10X the average industry speed.
  • Wrote new software in C#? >NET and MSSQL Server 2005.
  • Managed the technical director and team member.

Creative Business Systems Ltd

December 2003 to July 2004 Business and Financial Management Systems; MBS Navision and QlikView reseller Project Management, Development, Training Worked on several projects

  • Successfully trained clients on QlikView enabling the company to increase business contracts.
  • Learnt three new computer languages and two new frameworks in order to deliver disparate project proposals within 3 months of joining the company.
  • Created and modified Navision databases for CBS clients.
  • Worked on a VB application for the Inland Revenue Tax submission system, architecting a VB.NET version of a legacy VB6 version with significantly increased scope and functionality.

Time Out

December 2002 to November 2003 A break from work to review my career - Travelled in Africa for 2 months. - Researched a book on my local railway line and the impact it had on the agriculture in the area in terms of ease of transporting goods and price realised for them. - Became active in local church and voluntary organisations leading to becoming editor of the church newsletter, which I still do.

ARM Limited

December 1996 to December 2002 International embedded microprocessor design
Software Engineer: Project Delivery, Software Engineering, Team Lead, Project Manager
Technical Author: Project Delivery, Windows Help Authoring, Printed Manual Authoring

  • Team leader, managing the continued development of a debugger and overseeing the turnaround of its fortunes to last several more years.
  • Created Perl programs to improve a bespoke bug tracking system, and a web-driven front end to enable others to view and change as needed.
  • Provided a web-driven front end for system to enable others to view and change if needed.
  • Maintained and enhanced an embedded kernel written in C and ARM assembler.
  • Developed and perfected tools to perform low level debugging of embedded ARM development boards, including use of logic analysers, hardware trace, and logic simulation techniques.
  • Re-wrote and installed some very complex machine code to enable poorly performing software to perform properly.

Earlier Career

Consultant (TCAM Systems UK), 1995 - 1996
Software Engineer (Insignia Solutions plc), 1993 - 1995
Analyst Programmer and Software Team Leader (EASAMS Ltd), 1989 - 1993

QUALIFICATIONS AFFILIATIONS AND TRAINING

Pragmatic Marketing Certified Product Manager, 2010
B.Eng Information Systems Engineering, Upper Second with Honours University of Surrey, 1985 - 1989
QlikTech: Professional Qlikview, Enterprise QlikView, 2004
MS Project 2003 Professional, Expert level, 2005
Learning Tree: Advanced MFC, 1999
ARM: Project Management, Fundamentals, Global Operations Conferences, 2000
Digitext: Windows HDK, 2001
Member, ACM.

INTERESTS

Committee member, past Webmaster and Treasurer of WoTUG (an organisation supporting the use of Prof Hoare"s "CSP" theory). Local church, photography, railways, gardening, tropical fish, Sunday School and Youth group, amateur dramatics, Pendon Museum.