Mark Honeychurch

# Mark Honeychurch

Location: Whitby, Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand (opens new window)

Mobile: +64 21 885 216

Email: mark@honeychurch.org

Website: mark.honeychurch.org (opens new window)

Code: git.io/markh (opens new window)

Nationality: British & New Zealand Citizenship

# Background

The last twelve years have been spent working for an Australian company, Interactive, both as a hardware support engineer and a fullstack software developer. Prior to that I worked as a systems support engineer. Interactive have decided to close their Wellington office, therefore I am looking for a full-time permanent or contract role, working in development or support.

# Competencies

  • Critical thinker - Able to critically analyse ideas and offer constructive criticisms.
  • Creative problem solver - Enjoy being given challenging tasks, and will come up with novel but practical solutions to complex problems.
  • Keen and quick learner - Can research topics and synthesise new information quickly. Enjoy using new technologies, and always seek to know more.
  • Methodical worker - Able to see projects through design and implementation to completion, and happy working to deadlines.
  • Capable communicator - Comfortable building and maintaining relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.

# Technical Skills

# Education

# Certifications

Cert Details
LPIC LPI Linux Levels 1 & 2 Certified
UCP Ubuntu Certified Professional
ITIL ITIL Foundation Certified
MCP Microsoft Certified Professional - Windows & Clustering
MCITP Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional
MCTS Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist - MS SQL
W3C HTML W3C Certified HTML Developer
ASAP NetApp Accredited Storage Architect Professional
NCDA NetApp Certified Data Management Administrator

# Degree: M.Eng (Hons)

CVLogo University of Bristol (opens new window) Master's Degree with Honours in Mechanical Engineering (1994 - 1998)

# Work Experience

# Software Developer

CVLogo Telesmart (opens new window) Wellington, NZ (2019-10 – )

At Telesmart I develop software products for both in-house and customer consumption, using modern tooling and libraries to deliver high quality solutions.

# Projects

Customer Portal. I designed and developed a Customer Portal utilising a NuxtJS and Vuetify frontend, with secure authorisation using JSON Web Tokens. The backend infrastructure consists of a set of Federated Apollo GraphQL Microservices, with PassportJS and third party OAuth authentication strategies. Lerna is used for monorepo management, along with MongoDB and Redis for data storage. All The code is deployed to virtualisation containers hosted on a Docker Swarm, using an automated build pipeline. All together, the project contains 11 scalable microservices and 14 custom written private Node modules.

# Hardware Engineer, Software Engineer

CVLogo Interactive (opens new window) Wellington, NZ (2007-10 – 2019-10)

My primary role at Interactive was in hardware support, providing a first class service to our New Zealand customers. I covered HP, IBM, Dell and Sun servers, as well as Cisco networking equipment and NetApp and PureStorage storage hardware. I installed and supported hardware for many major customers across New Zealand.

During my time at Interactive I also created several software products for in-house consumption:

# Projects

Business Analysis. I created a dashboard for management allowing a view of the utilisation of all our field engineers. This was accomplished with direct SQL querying of our helpdesk system’s database, along with a web-based front end using jQuery, Bootstrap and the D3 graphing library.

Rostering Website. I developed a complex web-based scheduling system for Interactive's on-call rosters, using Javascript, Moment, Vuetify, the Vue CLI tool and C#.

Tracking System. I created an end-to-end tracking software solution for our engineers, including an iOS app for interfacing with a ticketing system and reporting geolocation, a Node.JS and Mongo backend for data storage, and a Vue frontend with websockets for displaying realtime engineer locations and statuses, using Docker on Linux as a platform.

Rapid Development I was asked to develop a simple customer portal in 24 hours that would allow one of our customers to access details of their support contract with us. Using Vue and Bootstrap, and accessing existing data in multiple Microsoft SQL databases, I was able to code a secure, modern, responsive website that worked for all of our customers in less than a day.

# Systems Engineer, Server Team Lead

CVLogo gen-i (opens new window) Wellington, NZ (2006-04 – 2007-10)

When I started with gen-i, I provided 2nd and 3rd level support for the ANZ National Bank throughout New Zealand. This support involved both completing work requests and fault fixing. Work requests included maintaining the Active Directory environment, providing network shares, building PCs and installing software. Fault fixing covered the whole range of the bank's IT hardware and software, with the hardware mainly consisting of Compaq/HP and Dell servers, PCs and Laptops, and software running to hundreds of packages. Issues dealt with ranged from dial-up and broadband problems, through OS and application faults to Exchange and Active Directory problems.

After several months in the role, I became Technical Lead of gen-i's ANZ Server Support team, looking after all ANZ and NBNZ production servers. This involved a mixture of projects and day-to-day administration of branch and corporate servers, including backups, hardware and software problems and routine maintenance. Faults were fixed within SLA and, in alignment with ITIL best practice, problem records were created and root causes diagnosed and repaired. Incidents ranged from the relatively simple, such as hardware failures, to the complex, such as troubleshooting NDMP backup problems.

As well as supporting the environment, I supported the other server engineers on the contract – helping with technical issues, running weekly meetings and distributing work when required. I encouraged engineers to gain qualifications and aided them where possible.

# Projects

RightFax Upgrade. I ran a project to migrate existing RightFax users to a new infrastructure. This process involved the building of new RightFax servers, installation of Microsoft SQL clusters (including setup of SAN disks) in both Production and DR environments and the subsequent migration of Fax mailboxes between servers.

# Technician

CVLogo Department of Internal Affairs (opens new window) Wellington, NZ (2005-11 - 2006-04)

At the DIA I supported over 1,000 users in an Active Directory and Lotus Notes environment, both for the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Transport. Support was given over the telephone Nationwide, and additionally with site visits within the Wellington CBD area. PCs were generally Windows 2000, with some remote clients using Citrix, and the hardware used was mainly HP/Compaq Desktops and HP and Ricoh Printers. Supported applications included Microsoft Office, Oracle and Lotus Notes, with Checkpoint VPN-1 and iPass used for remote access.

# Voluntary Work

I have dedicated much of my spare time to working for charities, and have held the following positions:

These roles have involved people management, strategic planning, meeting statutory reporting requirements, overseeing projects, organising events, managing IT systems and protecting the public. As part of my voluntary work I have regularly talked with the media (newspapers, radio and TV), and from 2015 to 2018 I appeared on a regular radio segment on RadioLive called Skeptical Thoughts with Mark Honeychurch (opens new window), where I talked about scientific skepticism and critical thinking.

# Referees

Available on request, along with certification transcripts if required.