Richard Kistruck

Consultant.

Expertise

• Software architecture and design. Detailed customer dialogue, analysis and abstraction, all the way to formal functional and attribute specification where appropriate. Clean modularity.
• Software engineering. Evolutionary delivery of very high quality (low defect), robust, portable, scalable, and flexible solutions.
• Coding. Clear, simple, asserted, tested, and efficient code. ISO C to pedant level, Python, and whatever else is required.
• Software development praxis. Continuous integration and testing on multiple platforms. Versioned change management, issue tracking, etc.
• Memory management. Automatic (garbage collection) and manual memory management, analysis, placement and fragmentation issues, etc.
• Operating systems. Mac OS, Unix, Windows, and their internals.
• Human interface design.

Experience

• 2005-present: Consultant, Ravenbrook Limited. Continuing development of the Memory Pool System (memory management), for internal and external clients.
• 2001-2002: Consultant, Commtag Limited. Design and prototyping of personal- to wide- area network-application platform, connecting Bluetooth® devices to hosted services via mobile phones. Work on protocols, charging architecture, etc.
• 2000: Assistant Lecturer, The Open University. Tutor for a foundation level academic course, based on the development of personal computers and the internet.
• 1992-1999: Software Developer, Harlequin Limited. Real-time I/O, dynamic plugin architecture, PostScript®-language compatible interpreter, platform-independent user-interface framework, OO runtime in ISO C, memory management.
• 1986-1992: various short-term software and computer-related contracts.

Education

• 1988-1991: BA, Natural Sciences and Computer Science, University of Cambridge.
• 1987-1988: semester of study, Case Western Reserve University.
• 1984-1987: various A-levels, O-levels, etc.

Other

• Clear communicator and excellent team worker.
• Conversational Italian and French.