Salim Virji

San Francisco, California

OBJECTIVE

Write code. Make systems scale in spectacular ways.

EXPERIENCE

Independent Contractor, San Francisco CA
Currently working on a shrink-wrapped enterprise software product, with code written in C and C++. Toolkit includes Mozilla and MSFC. Previous contract work with Toltec Engineering, LLC, included development of Netscape 4.x for Windows; Netscape 7.0 for HPUX; and bugfixing Mozilla 1.1 for HPUX.

frogdesign, San Francisco CA
Senior Java Programmer, January to September 2001
Responsible for the design and implementation of a workflow system, threaded discussion module, and various system utilities comprising an enterprise collaboration tool, bizwerk. Beta release expected Q4 2001.
Toolset included J2EE, Oracle 8x, and Lutris Enhydra.

Topica, Inc., San Francisco, CA
Senior Web Engineer April 1999 to December 2000
Designed and implemented features for the presentation of a very large-scale website. Key projects included a complete redesign of the web UI, first in mod_perl, and then with java servlets; a management interface for Topica's proprietary adserving technology; and an administrative system for email newsletters. All systems ran on Apache 1.3.x servers, connecting with BEA Tuxedo services to multiple Oracle 8i databases.
This position demanded the ability to make critical decisions and stick with them; to rapidly develop code in perl, javascript, and C on both legacy and new platforms; and familiarity with a n-tier, distributed architecture.

Intuit, Inc., Mountain View, CA
April 1997 to April 1999
Software Engineer, May 1998 to April 1999
Development of tools for content producers and engineers to use in developing www.quicken.com. Tools include an automated site editor, brand-sensitive content generator, and content-distribution system. Extensive work done in perl and sh under Solaris, covering networking, legacy code integration, UI, and filesystem management.
Web Engineer, April 1997 to May 1998
Responsible for development and enhancement of webserver applications, site management tools, and day-to-day operations of a large-scale financial services website.
Projects included the design and implementation of a revision-control system for all web objects and internal code; writing a scheduling tool for web content management; migrating various inherited data feeds to a single fully-automated, configurable system; and managing the deployment and scaling of production webservers, from 15 at launch (November 1997) to 120+ (April 1998).

GALT Technologies, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA
December 1995 to April 1997 acquisition by Intuit, Inc.
Webmaster, April 1996 to April 1997
Responsible for designing tools for use on webservers, managing document trees on unix machines, and for maintaining databases.
Interface Designer, December 1995 to March 1996
responsibilities as factotum included web design, cgi scripting, and site maintenance

Chicago Maroon, official and independent student newspaper of the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
October 1991 to September 1995
Managing Editor, Winter 1995 to Summer 1995
Arts and entertainment editor, Voices, Spring 1993 to Summer 1994
Weekly arts and entertainment columnist, The Mystic Heuristic, 1992 to 1995
Other newsroom experience includes news and copy editing, editorial writing, layout, and photography

Joseph Regenstein Library: Clerk to Classics Bibliographer, Catherine Mardikes, 1994 to 1995
Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh: Research Assistant to Dr. Gaea Leinhardt, summer 1992

SKILLS

perl 5
java (java 1.3, j2EE)
java development environments and tools (BEA WebLogic, ant, tomcat4, Together)
php/mySQL
ANSI C and the GNU toolkits (gcc, gdb, gmake)
System design skills with UML
Extensive application development with Apache/mod_perl
Database design and tuning (Oracle8, PL/SQL; mySQL, SQL)
Web application development with XSLT, DHTML, and various scripting languages (jsp, perl, tcl);
System administration (Linux, Solaris, OSX)
Cocoa development with java and ObjectiveC

EDUCATION

University of Chicago, The College, Class of 1995
B.A. in Classical Studies; Dean's List
Senior paper: The Religious and Poetic Imagery of Wine-Drinking in the Cyclops of Euripides

PUBLICATIONS

Leinhardt, G., Stainton, K., and Virji, Salim M., A Sense of History Educational Psychologist; Spring 1994 (29:2), 79-88

Leinhardt, G., Stainton, K., Odoroff, E., and Virji, Salim M., Learning to Reason in History: Mindlessness to mindfulness in Carretero, Mario, and James F. Voss, eds., Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences, Princeton, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum., 1994

ACHIEVEMENTS

University of Chicago Richter Grant, summer 1993; research concerning Greek and Early Christian ritual
University of Chicago Maroon Award, for contribution to campus activities, 1992

Community Activities

Radio broadcasting (programs on WPTS-FM Pittsburgh, WHPK-FM Chicago, and a ham radio licence)