Name

Matthew James Ralston

Address

22 Redbrook Road, Timperley, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA15 7EQ.

E-Mail Address

matt@mralston.co.uk

Date Of Birth

23^rd August 1980

Skills

Operating systems

• MS Windows 9x, NT, 2000, XP & 2003 clients & servers
• Apple Mac OS 7, 8, X client & server
• Gentoo, Red Hat, SuSE & CentOS Linux
• Open BSD & Solaris

Development environments and platforms

• MySQL, MySQL Cluster, SQL Server, Access
• Apache & IIS
• Asterisk PBX, VoipSwitch
• BIND, Exim, Courier IMAP, QPopper, Free RADIUS
• Zend, Dreamweaver, MS Visual Studio, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Freehand

Technologies and languages

• PHP, ASP, HTML, CSS, Javascript
• C#, Visual Basic
• AJAX
• XML

Employment History

Cencion Communications Ltd - Systems Architect - 2006-2008
Cencion is a modern telecommunications company offering converged solutions using voice (IVR), mobile (SMS & WAP), billing, call centre and data connectivity technologies. I am responsible for the upkeep of the majority of their platform and the development of bespoke new IVR & SMS services using the Asterisk PBX, VoipSwitch, PHP, MySQL & SQL Server.

Gorilla Golf Ltd - Systems Architect - 2006 (Short term contract)
Gorilla Golf is an online golf equipment shop. I designed the site's branding & promotional material and put together the code and database behind the site. The site is written in PHP and stores data in a MySQL database. It uses mod_rewrite rules to present friendly URLs to search engines. The site's products are grouped by category and manufacturer and are fully searchable. The site features full shopping basket and checkout functionality and payment is taken via PayPal, using their IPN mechanism to ensure the validity of transactions and trigger order fulfilment. An extensive administration site provides facilities for updating the site's product database and tracking customers and orders.

text2view Ltd - Technical Manager - 2006 (Short term contract)
text2view develop a range of content and applications aimed at the mobile phone platform. Their flagship product is the eMag, a Java and WAP based magazine currently covering several sports including carp fishing, football and motor racing. Whilst at the company I developed their corporate website, put several eMags together, developed a gateway mechanism for delivering eMags targeted to customers' mobile phone models, and advised on all technical matters.

Breathe Networks Ltd - Technical Consultant & Systems Architect - 2006-Present
Formerly Net Access Ltd, Breathe are a large independent ISP. After leaving full time employment with Net Access / Breathe I continued contractual work for Breathe, providing second line technical support and network and system administration. Under this role, I designed and build Breathe's new chargeable mail system - a large clustered e-mail platform supporting approximately 70,000 customers. The platform is Linux based, using Courier IMAP and Exim for e-mail with a MySQL Cluster backend database. One special requirement of this platform was chargeable mail, which ensures that all e-mail customers pay for their service, either directly via a "mail only" subscription package or by connecting to the Internet via one of Breathe's ISP packages. The chargeable mail system uses an intelligent proxy service which authenticates all e-mail sessions against Breathe's billing system to ensure that all users of the system generage revenue for the business.

Net Access Ltd - Technical Manager - 2004-2006
Net Access were one of the companies whose ISP services were managed by Net Acquisitions (see below). In 2004 Net Access took all of their services in-house and as a direct result I was transferred to Net Access' employment under the TUPE laws. During my time at Net Access I was heavily involved in the migration of the newly acquired Affinity's customer base from its Fujitsu platform to Tiscali. (Affinity was the ISP behind breathe, W H Smith, Arsenal, Classic FM and many more.) Over time I progressed to the position of Technical Manager in charge of their entire technical infrastructure. One of my main responsibilities was to ensure the smooth operation of their UNIX servers which ran web, e-mail, RADIUS and management facilities for their ISP brands. I was heavily involved in new development work, which included the development of a generic service level API written using PHP, MySQL & XML, allowing the company's outsourced billing & customer services platform to administer customers' accounts which lay across several disparate systems. I also developed several other applications including a web based mass mailer, a realtime chat application and the administration systems used by the helpdesk.

Net Acquisitions Ltd - Web Developer - 2001-2004
Net Acquisitions was a small company which specialised in acquiring and managing ISPs for corporate clients wishing to expand their subscriber bases. Net Acquisitions bought the ISPs madasafish, Jings!, ic24, Totalise, callnet and TotalServe on behalf of Brightview Ltd, and macunlimited.net, Bush Internet, Netcom, Intensive Networks and Affinity (including breathe Internet) for Net Access. I was initially employed by Net Acquisitions as a PHP developer. My first task was to build a generic brandable registration interface to allow the ISPs to continue to sign up new customers as their services were migrated to a managed platform in Manchester, after which I quickly found myself in charge of the many ISP website portals acquired. Net Acquisitions also undertook several smaller projects for which I was responsible for all software development work. These included macXchange - a buyer and seller of used Apple Mac computers, and myholidayfriends - a holiday themed version of Friends Reunited which aimed to reunite people who had met on holiday.

Halton College - Modern Apprentice - 1998-2001
I worked in the media department fulfilling a number of different functions. Primarily my work revolved around developing and maintaining various websites for the college and outside clients. I produced all the server side programming and database development for the college's internet and intranet sites. Latterly I developed a web-based assessment tracking system for a chemical company, and a bulletin board for the college's student intranet. I was also jointly responsible for maintaining an Apple Mac network including server and hub management.