Steve Swanson – swanson.steven@gmail.com – US Permanent Resident – CDN Citizen

B.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering candidate, April 2009, with six co-op work-terms experience. I am a hard working, entrepreneurial individual interested in software and web development with aspirations to leadership positions. Especially interested in working in a start up environment. Able to work in Canada (citizen) and the United States (permanent resident).

· Excellent leadership skills acquired through leading the test team in a release cycle of PlateSpin Forge

· Outstanding work ethic reinforced through the requirement for the completion of a project, at General Dynamics Canada, under strict time constraints.

· Strong analytical and problem solving skills developed through the debugging and testing of PlateSpin Forge.

· Working knowledge of Windows, bug tracking, Microsoft Office, Ruby, Scrum (agile development process) and virtualization technologies, including VMWare ESX Server.

· Familiar with C/C++, Visual C++, Linux, AutoCAD, TCP/IP protocols, bash scripting, computer hardware and circuitry.

PlateSpin – Premier provider of data centre consolidation and disaster recovery

Test Engineering Group

Automation Engineer Aug – Present

· Part-time automation responsibilities including designing and implementing a test automation Framework in the object oriented scripting language, Ruby for PlateSpin’s web application.

Test Team Lead – PlateSpin Forge (evaluations: Outstanding) May – Aug 2008

· Full-time test team lead of a release cycle of PlateSpin Forge, a web based disaster recovery appliance. Responsibilities included the design and implementation of a risk based test plan, managing a small team and ensuring that the release to manufacturing (RTM) date was achieved.

· Cultivated vast leadership skills through mentoring and leading the other members of the Forge test team.

· Gained valuable recruiting skills through interviewing potential coop student candidates for a test engineer role.

Test Engineer (evaluation: Outstanding) Sep – Dec 2007

· Involved in all areas of PlateSpin’s test engineering department

· Improved knowledge of the development process through seeing the development of Forge from inception to release.

General Dynamics – Leading Canadian Defense Company, Maritime Helicopter Project

Integrated Mission Systems Engineer (evaluation: Excellent) Jan – Apr 2007

· Implemented key initialization sequence diagrams, greatly improving knowledge of large scale system modeling.

· Gained valuable programming experience with Microsoft Visual C++ through the creation of an alert flowchart classification program.

McAfee – Leader in Anti Virus software

Technology Specialist – Testing Analyst (evaluation: Excellent) May – Aug 2006

· Responsible for the completion of test plan for the release of McAfee anti-virus products

· Improved ability to learn new technology through the introduction to new McAfee products

Bell Canada – Leading telecommunication provider in Canada

Voice networking specialist (evaluation: Excellent) Jan – Apr & Sep – Dec 2005

· Responsible for leading the testing of the new Bell voice messaging platform.

· Reinforced dedication and ability to work independently through the completion of the voice messaging test plan under strict time constraints.

· Introduction to new voice messaging platform greatly improved ability to learn new information

Teacher’s Aide, Churchill Public School 2004

University of Waterloo – B.Sc. candidate, Systems Design Engineering 2009

· Currently developing a web based application to simplify how students plan their academic career and sign up for classes. The current system is out dated and very difficult to use.

· Designed a new magnetic electrical outlet to help the elderly, paper published on the design: Swanson, et all, The Maglet: A New Electrical Outlet for the Elderly, Proceeding of the Fourth IASTED International Conference, 2008.

– Memberships

· Association of Software Testers, AST, student member.

· Toronto Association of Software Quality Assurance, student member

– Extracurricular activities – University of Waterloo

· Class Representative – Class of Systems Design 2A, (2006)

· Conference of the Association of Software Testers 2008 delegate

· Captain of the Intramural 3rd and 4th year soccer team, (2006-08)

– Personal interests

· Soccer, rock climbing, canoeing, fitness, skiing, and volleyball

· Blogging: http://steveswanson.wordpress.com

· Creative cooking, gaming, reading (fiction/non fiction) and introspection

The recommendation below comes form my manager, Adam White, in my Team Lead position at PlateSpin and can be seen on my Linkedin profile.

“Steve is an example of a potential rising star in the software industry. When he started at PlateSpin as a co-op he was quickly identified as a strong problem solver and technical guru. He has the ability to think through problems very quickly and effectively. It was also very clear that he was goal-driven and self directed through his actions and work output. Another skill we noticed was his people sense. He is very aware of himself through the process of introspection and he is also aware of other people. This is something that I don’t see often in people who are still in university. The great thing about Steve is he is willing to explore this and share his thoughts and observations. On his second term I felt confident he could lead a small team of testers through a product release. Others on the development team second my decision which also says a lot about his skill set. If he continues to explore and learn about people the way he currently does his potential for success in whatever he chooses will be unlimited. If I summed Steve up it would be “Smart and get things done””
July 23, 2008

Adam White (adamkwhite.com), Manager, Test Engineering and Escalations, PlateSpin Ltd.
managed Steve at PlateSpin