Resume of Michael Bentzen

Last Updated: 24/7/2009

Date of Birth: 07/05/1989
Mobile phone: +61 0414 44 1859
Email: mike at goodlook.com.au
Jabber: mbentzen at jabber.org.au

Objective

My objective is to obtain a challenging and rewarding position in my chosen field of information technology providing the opportunity to utilise my expertise and maintain my commitment to continual learning as technology develops.

I am a highly motivated, enthusiastic and dependable developer. I am incredibly passionate with what I do and how I do it.

Personal Attributes

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
  • Conceptual thinking and problem solving skills.
  • Pro-active with excellent organisational and time management skills.
  • Ability to work with a team and independently.
  • Commitment to quality work.
  • Commitment to continual learning.
  • Polite, patient and considerate.
  • Work well under pressure.
  • Willing to follow directions.

Employment

Information Technology Officer, WB Financial (October 2007 – Present)
I am currently employed by WB Financial. I have developed numerous custom in-house software including financial calculation applications, auditing and user management applications. The calculation applications were written to provide financial advisers with utilities that helped depict their clients financial journey, and also used as selling tools. They were also written to ensure advisers complied with internal business rules. During the first year of my employment, my first major project was to redesign the Intranet and Extranet.

I have comprehensive experience with developing internal business tools used by my employer, which have been primarily written in C#.

As part of my role, I am required to provide support for approximately 130 users across 19 subsidiary offices around Australia. I have had experience with configuring Cisco switches and routers, implementing and configuring new servers desktop workstations and assisting with purchasing decisions..

This is a part-time position, allowing flexible hours around my university studies.
Precious Previews (November 2008 - January 2009)
I liaised with the owners of this business to setup shared hosting with email and VPN services. I was also commissioned to create the website and backend programming including the optimal time calendar mini application. I still presently maintain this website.
Retail Sales Person, Harvey Norman Computers Loganholme (January 2007 – January 2008)
I was employed by Harvey Norman Computers at Loganholme. In this position, I had a dual role as a sales assistant and technical support computer technician. During my time there, I gained valuable experience in sales and interaction with a wide variety of clients. These roles required professional and effective communication to increase sales and assist in solving computer related problems. I also liaised with other organisations such as 'Flexirent' to establish rental contracts. This position required its employees to work as part of a team with other IT professionals to reach common goals within the company.
Canterbury College - I.T. Support (December, 2006 – February 2007 )
Over the Christmas holiday period I gained valuable experience while volunteering my time for work experience with the head of ICT at Canterbury College. I assisted by creating new workstation images and deploying them over the network of over 900 computers. I also helped to configure server group policies and re-write custom batch scripts.
Good Look Signs, Art Connection (December, 2006 – February 2007)
I liaised with the owners of these businesses and setup shared hosting with email and VPN services.
OzKleen Asia Pacific (Shower Power) (January 2007)
I was commissioned to evaluate, report, recommend and rectify the computer network and I continue to provide IT support for this company, when required.
McDonalds Family Restaurant (#2) (November 2004 – February 2006)
During my studies at high school I had a casual position working at McDonalds Family Restaurant (#2) at Loganholme. During this period I was trained in various operational procedures within the store, including customer service, food preparation, quality control and workplace health and safety. I found this role to be very rewarding giving me valuable experience in a fast paced, customer focused environment.

Experience

Through my experience with WB Financial, and through many of the database subjects I have completed at university, I have gained a lot of skills with database design and normalisation focusing on the structural integrity of data and how it is used within organisations. I have had a lot of experience with SQL and object relational modelling tools (including LINQ).

My experiences have also focused extensively on the use of design patterns (especially the use of MVC, N-tiered, and SOA architectures) that have helped separate development between team members, encouraged code reuse and separation of concerns.

Throughout my degree I have also grasped vast knowledge, and experience in agile development methodologies within team based scenarios.

My focus to date has been primarily on Web Forms, Web services and Windows Forms. I have also dabbled in WCF and distributed services and would like to further my experience in these areas.

I am passionate about writing great software, utilising architectural design patterns for functionality and optimum business development. I am also passionate about open source software and have had experience writing .NET software under Linux using Mono.

Education

Bachelor of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology (Currently Studying)
I am currently studying a Bachelor of Information Technology, majoring in Software Engineering at QUT, Brisbane, Australia. I have gained valuable experience in project management, teamwork and leadership through group and individual assignments. I have also acquired extensive experience with time management, working four days per week (30 hours) at my current job (including project deadlines) and managing full-time university.

My focus to date has been primarily on Web Forms, Web services and Windows Forms. I have also dabbled in WCF and distributed services and would like to further my knowledge in these areas.

My experiences have also focused extensively on the use of design patterns (especially the use of MVC, N-tiered, and SOA architectures) that have helped separate development between team members, encouraged code reuse and separation of concerns.

Throughout my degree I have also grasped vast knowledge, and experience in agile development methodologies within team based scenarios.
Secondary Education: Canterbury College
I obtained my certificate of graduation from High School completing my secondary education (year 12) in 2006 - Canterbury College, Waterford, Australia. My senior studies included: English, Maths A, Health and Physical Education, Information Processing and Technology, Legal Studies and Multimedia. Upon graduation, I received the College Information Processing & Technology Award for 2006. I also received a Certificate II in multimedia and design through Qantm and obtained High Achievements in Legal Studies, Maths A and Physical Education. Throughout 2004 - 2006 I was an active college member of the Beenleigh Junior Chamber of Commerce.

Knowledge

Information Technology
  • Networking - Cisco Router Configuration, Virtual Private Networks, Network Services, Administration
  • Systems Programming, Threading, Concurrency, Architecture, System Services
  • Algorithms, problem solving, computational complexity
  • Enterprise Software Architecture and Component Design
  • Database design and implementation
  • Backup procedures and implementation
  • Workstation configuration including installation, imaging and deploying
  • Service hosting, integration, and management
  • Maintaining many servers (open source and commercial) (exchange, postfix, sendmail, dovecot)
  • Implementing spam and virus filtering (open source and commercial)
  • Implementing storage devices & archiving, and defining disaster recovery procedures
Software Development
  • Languages
    • Object-oriented imperative (C#, PHP, Java, C++)
    • Declarative (SQL)
    • Functional (Scheme/Lisp, Python, Javascript)
    • Procedural imperative (C)
  • Methodologies, Design Patterns
    • MVC Frameworks (ASP.NET MVC, KohanaPHP, CodeIgniter, Zend)
    • Service Orientated Architecutre
    • Convention over Configuration
  • Tools
    • Relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL)
    • RAD database development (Microsoft Access)
    • Operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, Windows)
    • Collaboration (MediaWiki, Dokuwiki, trac)
    • Versioning Systems (Subversion, GIT)
    • IDEs (Microsoft Visual Studio, Dreamweaver, Eclipse, Netbeans)
  • Security (XSS, SQL injection, Encryption)
  • Web design ((X)HTML, CSS)
  • Javascript Libraries, jQuery

Through the various opportunities that have been available to me I have gained extensive experience with networking, programming, hardware, server configuration, web design and hosting.

Other Interests

I have many other interests besides my area of passion
  • Latin Dancing
  • Electronic/Ambient/EBM/IDM music
  • Cycling
  • Tennis
  • Learning about anything I do not already know

Future Goals

Future goals include:
  • Assisting development in open source contexts
  • Participating in Google's Summer of Code
  • Furthering my skills in programming languages
  • Learning a foreign language

Referees

A list of referees is available on request.