Tomáš Pospíšek: Curriculum Vitae

About my person

I was born 1969, got a degree in computer science (University of Fribourg, with minor subject general psychology) quite a while after and am sometimes working as a freelancer/contractor and sometimes being employed. I have spent my life in different parts of Switzerland and on travels on this globe. I'm living with my family in the north of Switzerland.

After studies I worked as a freelancer on several software development projects. 1995 I co-founded and built up the internet provider SPIN, where I was responsible for the technical aspects and was leading a small tech team.

At the end of 1998 I quit SPIN and was traveling around during 1999.

Mid-2000 Pirmin Kalberer and I founded Sourcepole, a company that started with Linux and Open Source engineering and services and has specialized in Open Source Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in recent years. In teams, independently or with third parties we do projects sized from one person-month to multiple years with dozens of participants.

Since 2002 I've been giving lectures at the Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften and am overseeing students' assignments. My subjects are systems programming, operating systems, high availability, data communication, firewalls, Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

In 2013 I went traveling around the world for a year in a motor home with my two kids.

Currently I'm systems administrator at Sourcepole. You can reach me at tpo_hp@sourcepole.ch

Computer languages, systems and technologies

The following technologies, languages and systems are being employed in current projects:
- DNS/bind, Etcd, HTTP(S)/Apache/Nginx, IMAP(S)/Sieve/Dovecot, iptables, Letsencrypt, SMTP(S)/Exim/mstmtpd/Nullmailer, SQL/Patroni/Postgres/Postgis, TCP/IP, TLS
- XFCE, X2Go
- Docker, LXC, Kubernetes, KVM, qemu
- Linux, Alpine, Debian, Fedora
I have at least one year of experience with these technologies:
- C, C++, Excel VBA, JavaScript, Perl, Ruby, Ruby on Rails
- CSS, DOM, HTML, XML
- Confluence, Git, Jira, op5, Puppet
- KDE, Multithreading with Pthreads, Qt
- Internet Explorer, MySQL
- Chromium, Firefox, Firebug
- RedHat, SuSE
- Linux, OSX, Debian-, RedHat-, Ubuntu packet management and systems administration
- Cisco and Cumulus routers and switches, Fortinet and Juniper firewalls
- VXLAN, overlay networks and network virtualisation, CLOS/spine and leaf architectures, optical and copper networks
I know these technologies, but either haven't employed them in a while or over a period shorter than a year:
- Ada, AppleScript, Capybara, Django Dashing, ERB, Fortran, HAML, Java, Lisp, Modula-2, Netbeans Rich Client Platform, Pascal, PHP, Prolog, Rust, Scheme, Selenium, ST
- CVS, GForge, Subversion
- duplicity, sendmail
- LDAP, SOAP, WSDL, XSD, XSL
- cdist, CruiseControl, GForge, Mapserver, memcached, Mongrel, OpenLDAP, Samba, Together, X11
- 6502 & 680x0 Assembler, AIX- and Solaris packet management and systems administration, Atari ST, B&R, C64, Macintosh, Win2000, Win3.11 (with GUI), Win95 (with GUI), Win97, WinNT, Windows XP Embedded
- wireless networks

Computer Networks

From 1995 to 1999 I was doing the technical (and less also the organisational) part of running SPIN - a regional ISP. Through this work I have gained experience in the following areas:

Administration of heterogenous networks on IP basis (Unix, Mac, Windows), routing, LAN, WAN, dial-in, securing of the network through cryptographic techniques, firewalls.
Administration of Unix systems, namely Linux.
Installation and maintenance of internet services such as WWW, FTP, DNS, SSH, SMTP(mail), POP, IMAP, dial-in.
Networking over dial-up or leased lines: analog (dial-up modems, leased line modems), digital (ISDN, PRI).
Integration of services and systems through scripting (Perl, Shell) and designing a WWW user interface for the whole system.

One of my tasks at T-Systems during the year 2009 was to verify and correct the network architecture and effective connectivity of a very critical core realtime system.

After 2010, as part of a team I helped to designe, architect, an migrate a mid-sized mixed technologies wide area network from a Cisco based core router architectur to a Cumulus based spine and leaf architecture.

Completed projects

These are the projects that were completed during my professional career (in chronological order):

Porting of a Module for statistical data analysis from Fortran to C and development of data analysis module in Excel VBA

Technologies:
Win3.11, Fortran, C, VBA

Duration:
4 months
Further development and support of a software for company-wide control and accounting of work times

Technologies:
Win3.11, Win95, Borland-C++, Watcom-SQL, OWL (GUI), UML with Rational Rose

Duration:
6 months
Module for exchange of data between different databases of the above software for company-wide control and accounting of work times

Technologies:
Win95, Borland-C++, Watcom-SQL, OWL (GUI)

Duration:
2 months
Retrieval, analysis and implementation of an algorithm for version-control and management of software ("delta-algorithm")

Technologies:
C

Duration:
3 months
Building and running a internet services provider

Technologies:
Linux, limited support for Windows, Mac, Perl, C, Shell

Duration:
3 years
Individual course about networking/linux

Technologies:
Linux, Perl, configuration of various servers

Duration:
1 day
Course/consulting about firewall/linux

Technologies:
Linux

Duration:
1 day
Implementation of the Sourcepole Website on top of Cocoon

Technologies:
Linux, Cocoon, CSS, HTML, XML, XSL

Duration:
2 weeks
GIS (geographic information systems) consulting

Technologies:
Solaris, ArcIMS

Duration:
2 weeks
Elaboration of a concept for a DB-based web application with XML structured data import/export

Technologies:
Linux, Java, PHP, XML

Duration:
1 week
GUI and DB development

Technologies:
Linux, Windows, Java, AWT

Duration:
2 1/2 weeks
Installation of an embedded Linux system prototype

Technologies:
Linux (Elinos), Shell

Duration:
1 week
Setup and support of a web hosting service

Technologies:
Linux (Debian), Perl, Shell

Duration:
3 years
Perl consulting/support/application development

Technologies:
Linux, Perl

Duration:
1 week
Implementation, deployment and support of a SOHO server

Technologies:
Linux (Debian), Perl, Shell, various network services

Duration:
3 years
GUI for GIS/DB application

Technologies:
Linux, Java, Swing, XML

Duration:
1 month
Development and support of a video server

Technologies:
Linux (Debian), RealServer, Perl, Shell

Duration:
3 years
Project management for the development of a backup system web frontend

Technologies:
Linux, AFBackup, Perl

Duration:
2 years
Managed services for various small companies

Technologies:
AFBackup, Apache, Debian, Firewalls on IPTables basis, Linux, PHP, Samba

Duration:
5 years
Project management and co-development of a Linux distribution based on CRUX

Technologies:
Knoppix, Linux, Perl, Shell

Duration:
2 years
Technology consulting for the Swiss Federal Archives with respect to implementation of archival solutions based on XML and XSD

Technologies:
XML, XSD, Java

Duration:
8 months
Development on a GIS web application

Technologies:
Mapserver, Ruby on Rails, Firebug

Duration:
3 weeks
Concept, implementation an maintenance of a high available, failover platform for a ruby on rails web application

Technologies:
Ruby on Rails, HA-Server, heartbeat, SSL Certificate Management, DRBD, Linux

Duration:
one month, maintenance ongoing
Concept and implementation of the SW life cicle for ticket selling machines for SBB / Swiss Rails. System tuning and inter-system communication

Technologies:
Ruby, XML, SOAP, WSDL, Java, CVS, Debian Package Management, Linux, grub, X11

Duration:
3 years
Embedded appliance: minimize Debian with X11 and Qt to under 100M, Adapt a touchscreen driver to new HW, config of an comprehensive graphical boot

Technologies:
Debian, Qemu, VirtualBox, Qt, Xorg, C

Duration:
3 weeks
Concept and implementation of a high available system for the authentication and management of users of web applications.

Technologies:
Debian, OpenLDAP, syncrepl, LAM, Apache

Duration:
2 weeks
Mandate for T-Systems:
- Display of installation states of servers
- Check and correction of the architecture of the lower levels of the realtime disposition-systems RCS of the swiss rails SBB
- Scripting of the deployment process and of the software distribution
Technologies:
Redhat, AIX, Solaris, ksh, bash, cvs, ssh, Network-Configuration, Zabbix, Tibco multicast

Management:
Coordination of participants, in order to bring the projects forward

Duration:
1 year
Co-development for Panter of Denteo

Technologies:
JavaScript, dhtmlxScheduler, Firefox, CSS, Ruby on Rails

Duration:
1 month at 200%
Project management and co-development of a Ruby on Rails customer project for Panter

Technologies:
JavaScript, Browser, Firebug, CSS, HTML, Ruby on Rails, Git, MySQL, memcached

When:
2010-2011, 40%

Methodology:
Agile
Co-development of Leihs for the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste

Technologies:
JavaScript, Browser, Firebug, CSS, HTML, Ruby on Rails, Git, MySQL, memcached

When:
2010-2011, 40%

Methodology:
Agile, Scrum
Development of a prototype for a machine control for combitool

Technologies:
C, IEC 61131 Structured Text, B&R Automation Studio, Actifsource, Redmine

When:
2011-2013
Work for Voicerepublic.com: Automatic systems setup and configuration, Ruby on Rails development

Technologies:
cdist, Shell, Ruby On Rails, JavaScript

When:
2014, 2 months
Part of a small systems and network administrators team at Schaffhauser Kantonalbank

Technologies:
confidential

When:
2014-2019
Senior in a small DevOps Teams at Sourcepole.ch
- Automated setup and backup of all Sourcepole systems
- Setup and maintainance of multiple hosted Kubernetes clusters
- Setup and maintenance of various web services and of the mail system
Technologies:
ansible, Apache, borgbackup, Docker, Git, Jinja, Kubernetes, Letsencrypt, Nginx, Python, Shell

When:
since autumn 2014
Maintenance and setup of spatial data infrastructure for the canton of Glarus
- as part of Sourcepole.ch employment
Technologies:
ansible, Apache, Docker, Git, Jinja, Letsencrypt, Linux, Nginx, Postgres, QGIS, Shell

When:
since 2013, ongoing
Maintenance and setup of the Veriso System
- as part of Sourcepole.ch employment
Technologies:
ansible, Linux, QGIS, Shell, X11

When:
since 2018, ongoing
Maintenance and setup of the FPDS2 application
- as part of Sourcepole.ch employment
Technologies:
ansible, Docker, Git, Jinja, Letsencrypt, Linux, Nginx, Postgres, QGIS, Shell

When:
since 2022, ongoing

Colaboration on Open Source projects:

Main developer of the mailsynctool

>Technologies:
C, C++, C-Client, IMAP, Unix

>Duration:
2 years, now in maintenance mode
Debian maintainer of the following software packages: mailsync, posixlock, screenie, udpcast

>Technologies:
C, Debian packet management, Linux, make, shell

>Duration:
ongoing since 2000
Debian ex-maintainer of: xxdiff

>Technologies:
C, Debian packet management, Linux, make, shell

>Duration:
approx. 5 years
Ex-Maintainer and co-developer of karm

>Technologies:
C++, KDE, Linux, Qt

>Duration:
1.5 years

These projects were completed during university studies.

Implementation of a search algorithm and graphical testtools. Mac style GUI design

>Technologies:
Macintosh, Modula-2

>Duration:
1 month
Development of a compiler for an OO language.

>Technologies:
SunOS, Ada

>Duration:
1 month in a team of two
Design and implementation of a neuronal network.

>Technologies:
SunOS, C, C++

>Duration:
1.5 months
Porting of a compiler from Borland-Pascal/MS-DOS to C/UNIX, documentation of existing techniques for creation of machine independent programms, such as virtual machines, interpreted languages, on-the-fly generation of code etc.

>Technologies:
MS-DOS, SunOS, Pascal, C

>Duration:
3 months