Download Dr Andy Pryke - AndyPryke.com

Dr Andy Pryke
Address:
Phone:
Email:
Flat 4, 24 Wake Green Rd, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 9PA
07866 566 178 (mobile), 0121 449 5282 (home)
[email protected]
Profile
Experience of a variety of roles in commercial software development from high-level company strategy
and policy through team leadership to the programming of large interactive web systems;
Work with Java since 1996; Full product life cycle experience on several projects. Several years
teaching Java; Mentoring commercial developers; Redesigning development processes.
Business experience: Chief Technical Officer of medium size web development company ( >100 staff);
Commercial system architect / programmer / team leader (mainly in Java); Liaising directly with clients
in both SMEs and larger companies; Full project lifecycle experience for a number of commercial
software products.
Software Development Experience: Architect/developer for large software projects; Multiple large
projects in Java - both in teams and solo; Technical skill in: Java, SQL, C++, UNIX/Linux, PHP, some
Perl, various Database (Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, some Oracle), HTML; Developed for parallel
deployment under multiple operating systems (Windows, Solaris, Linux).
Marketing / Press work: Client profiling; Writing and promoting press releases; Numerous TV, radio
and press interviews.
Academic: Ph.D. in "Data Mining using Symbolic Genetic Algorithms and Interactive Visualisation"
(University of Birmingham); One year research project mining data for a large telecoms company.
Technical Skills and Experience
Java (since 1996), including J2EE/EJB, JSP, JavaBeans, and JDBC; C++ (3 Years);
JavaScript (4 Years); HTML (Since 1994); XML (3 Years);SQL(8 Years); UNIX (since 1987);
Object Oriented Programming and Design (since 1991); Figures in years indicate use, figures
“since” indicate continual use.
Interests
Object Oriented Design and Development; Good Development Practice; Design Patterns; Lightweight
Methodologies; Iterative Development; Extreme Programming; Refactoring; Knowledge Sharing;
Knowledge Management; Team Development; Training and Teaching.
Recent Employment
Data Mining Researcher / Business Consultant, Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational
Intelligence and Applications (December 2003 to Current Date)
 Liaising with SMEs and larger businesses to elicit and document business problems and suggest
computational intelligence solutions.
 Data mining projects in a variety of business areas
 Development of bespoke data analysis software
Recent Java Consultancy and Freelance Work
 Extension and enhancement of web-based, database driven, library systems used extensively
throughout the UK, using JSP, JDBC and JavaBeans (January 2002 to August 2003)
 Training and mentoring in good development practice and release management (Winter 2001)
 Created easy to use content managed website for a newly launched charity (Autumn 2001)
 Completed a full website re-design for a local environmental campaign group (Autumn 2001)

Design and technical lead for major European bank's financial website project (Summer 2001)
Dr Andy Pryke
Technical Architect / Lead Developer, Kyros Solutions (Sept. 2001 - Nov. 2001)
 Implementation of a web-based messaging system using an open source core
 Java database interface for web-based business services using code generation and full unit testing to
reduce development time and increase both reliability and flexibility.
Chief Technical Officer, tw2 (Oct. 2000 - March 2001)
Top technical role at a web-development / eCommerce house employing more than 100 people.
 Performed key technical roles including design of system architecture.
 Redesign of product development cycle to increase communication and reduce time and costs
 Advised on technical issues for new and existing projects, including liaison with new customers.
 Coordinated research on application servers to inform the choice of platform and partner.
 Introduced a Wiki Wiki system as an organizational memory.
 Developed commercial web based systems using J2EE and JSP.
 Mentored team of 20 Java/VB/ Perl programmers, improving code quality and productivity.
Senior Developer, aQtive (May 1999 - Sept. 2000):
 Led a 5 developer project for a interactive, multi-user web-based system, with database backend.
 Responsible for the design and development of components of the onCue desktop agent.
 Specified and designed the system architecture for client and server side Java products.
 Implemented systems using Java, JDBC, Java Beans, JSP, XML and HTML.
 Proposed and led brainstorming and SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) sessions
which produced valuable ideas for new products and improvements to current products.
Academic Work
Ph.D. Computer Science, Birmingham University, (1993 - 1998)
Data Mining is the extraction of useful information from large amounts of data. There are two main way
which computation can help – discovery by computer and discovery by people using visualisation. My
Ph.D. work integrated techniques from the two fields to provide co-operative learning.
 Reviewed and assessed a wide range of data mining, machine learning and visualisation techniques
 Developed new methods of rule discovery using symbolic genetic algorithms.
 Invented novel techniques for the visualisation of both data and discoveries
 Wrote large object-oriented systems allowing complex behaviour whilst keeping code extensible.
Research Associate, Birmingham University - funded by a large telecoms company, (1998 - 1999)
 Further refined techniques developed during my Ph.D. using large real world telecom databases.
 Presentations to company Staff; project reports; documentation of software and techniques.
M.Sc. Cognitive Science, Birmingham University, (1991-1992)
Cognitive science examines the connections between mind and brain by building on work from multiple
disciplines including Philosophy, Neurophysiology, Artificial Intelligence and Linguistics.
 Received excellent marks, particularly in the Artificial Intelligence module.
 Dissertation project in C++. Created a simulation of an artificial creature which evolved to find food
and avoid traps using rules created by a genetic algorithm.
B.Sc.(hons) Information Technology 2(i), Leicester Polytechnic, (1987-1991)
Covered computing at multiple levels, from the transistor through to database design, human computer
interaction and high level system design. Strong emphasis on good design and coding.
 Dissertation project - Designed and implemented a hypertext browser in Pascal, awarded a "first" for
the quality of coding and design.
 Developed an "intelligent" draughts / checkers playing program in Prolog.
Teaching Java, C++ and "Computing for the Terrified" (1993 - 1999)
 Taught Java and C++ to B.Sc. and M.Sc. computer science students. Wrote and taught a "Computing
For the Terrified" course at Birmingham University, School of Continuing Studies.