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5/2010 – 5/2013

Pyxis was established in 2004 as a product company targeting the financial derivatives space. Over the years Pyxis has evolved into a platform leveraged, outsourced services company providing domain and technology services
A sampling of the work done by Pyxis include -
• Complex trading application implementation and enhancement
• Risk management and analytics for front/mid office
• Model development and calibration, independent valuation and pricing of derivatives

Project : Warrants Front Office Application Development
Type : Enhancement/Development
Platform : Windows, Linux
Software : Core Java, Sybase, EMS/JMS, RV, Autosys, Shell Scripting
Tools : log4j, Spring, Eclipse, Visual Studio
Client : Citigroup
Duration : 18 months
Role : Design/Development/Management/Support

Citi Warrants Technology team (currently based in Frankfurt with offshore teams at Hyderabad and Pune, India) supports the business activities for Citigroup, EMEA Warrants Business. The main responsibilities of the team are, development/enhancements of both Front Office and Back Office suites of applications; everyday Business Support.
The technology team works very closely with business to make sure the applications and systems are performing as close to their requirements as possible. The constant interaction also allows for identification and prioritization of new development related tasks. In his capacity, Saud is involved in various phases of all the support, development and management related activities.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Development and enhancements of Front Office suite of applications for Citigroup, Frankfurt (Warrants Market Making and Trading), which involves development, enhancement and management of complex low-latency, multi-threaded server applications
• Manage, train, direct, supervise, organize and control resources
• Management and coordination of offshore teams
• Employee selection, career development, succession planning and periodic training

Project : Murex Trade Workflow - MxML
Type : Enhancement
Platform : Windows, Linux
Software : MxML, Sybase, XSLT, Shell Scripting
Tools : Murex GUI, Swapswire (Markitwire)
Client : Citigroup
Duration : 8 Months
Role : Developer

Murex is one powerful platform to support trading, risk management and processing; across asset classes. It also is one robust platform for a 24x7 support of multiple entities. Murex is used by client to capture FX, IR, Credit and Mortgage Products including various exotic instruments
Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Making changes to MxML workflows depending on the requirements
• Enhancements of Swapswire (Markitwire) to Murex trade flow

Project : Trade Reconciliation
Type : Development
Platform : Windows, Linux, Solaris
Software : Core Java, Sybase, Autosys, Shell Scripting
Tools : log4j, Eclipse
Client : Citigroup
Duration : 6 Months
Role : Design/Project Management

Trade Reconciliation is a new initiative taken by the client at global level and it involves Reconciliation of trades across eleven different systems used to manage various types of products and activities. It is required to generate feeds from various systems for Vanilla and Exotic trades for various asset classes (e.g. FX, Interest Rates) in one standard format which can be used for reconciliation.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Continuous Interaction with multiple stake holders for different system to gather the requirement is one of the challenges in this project.
• Understanding of various systems, workflow within them and trade life cycle
• Requirement Analysis, Design & Development, Project scheduling, Releases and Deployment

Employer : Trenchant Financial Technologies, Chennai, India
Title : Chief Software Architect
Employment Period : 05/2009 to 05/2010

Trenchant Financial Technologies India Private Limited (Trenchant) believes in providing first class Wall St. opportunities to the brightest minds of India. Many US traders work in New York City which is one of the richest places in the world. The New York Stock Exchange is the largest stock market in the world. People from India have been some of the best traders. Trenchant Financial Technologies has moved Wall St. trading of the New York Stock Exchange to the fertile minds of India.
Trenchant’s Technology division provides coding and support for world class trading software, the lifeblood Trenchant’s worldwide day trading.

Project : ARCA Driver
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : FAST, VSS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla
Client : Hold Brothers
Duration : 2 Month (On-going)
Role : Design/Maintenenace

NYSE Arca is the 3rd largest marketplace in the U.S. Arca Driver is the ECN feed reader for NYSE ArcaBook. ArcaBook provides the complete limit order book for NYSE Arca's trading in listed (NYSE, NYSE Amex, Nasdaq, and NYSE Arca) securities, as well as the ArcaEdge (OTCBB) platform. Here is what is included in the ArcaBook:
• Complete limit order book for NYSE, Arca, and Alternext listed and Nasdaq securities, as well as the ArcaEdge bulletin board platform.
• Auction imbalance and pricing information for NYSE Arca opening, closing and halt auctions.
• View of orders attributed by Market Makers and ETP holders.
• ArcaBook disseminates indicative match price, match volume, total imbalance (limit and market orders) and market imbalance data.
Arca Driver, reads the feed over a Multicast, parses and transforms it to application specific form and sends it over another multicast to the Book Server. Book Servers are the components to which a trading application (Graybox) connects for the prints.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Since this is a maintenance phase of the project, the emphases are on minimizing the packet drops and enhanced architecture.
• Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications, Effort Estimation, Project scheduling
• System Testing, Load Testing and deployment

Project : Token Server
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : MSMQ, ZLIB, VSS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla
Client : Hold Brothers
Duration : 2 Month
Role : Design/Development

The Token Server is intended to work as a Permission Server for a lot of Trader Operations. It is to protect the firm from some unintended operations from trader’s terminals that could cause major revenue losses. One such feature that could cause this is Auto-Closeout. If due to a system failure, all trader terminals start issuing an Auto-Closeout, the firm could suffer huge losses. it is from some learning of the past that a need of Token Server arose and it's suppose to be a critical component in future trading environments.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications, Effort Estimation, Project scheduling
• Design and Implementation
• System Testing, Load Testing and deployment

Project : ECN Simulator
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : FIX, VSS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla
Client : Hold Brothers
Duration : 2 Month
Role : Design/Development

ECN (Electronic Communication Network) is a term used in financial circles for a type of computer system that facilitates trading of financial products outside of Stock Exchange. ECNs exist as a class of SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) permitted Alternative Trading Systems (ATS).
The ECN simulator is a Test Environment application that simulates various ECN operations such as Order Executions; Order Cancellations; Partial Executions etc. The ECN Simulator allows the developers to carry on development and testing activities even during the non-market hours; thus eliminating the market dependency

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications, Effort Estimation, Project scheduling, Design
• Deployment of Simulator in the Test Environment
Project : Risk Manager - Integration to Logon Server
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Server
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : ZLIB, IOCP, VSS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla
Client : Hold Brothers
Duration : 3 Month
Role : Design/Development

Logon Server was originally built to support specific client (Graybox). The intention behind this project was to make it generic and support requests from other types of clients; one such being Risk Manager.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications, Effort Estimation, Project scheduling
• Design and Development
• System Testing, Load/Stress Testing and deployment

Project : Logon Server
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Server
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : ZLIB, IOCP, VSS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla
Client : Hold Brothers
Duration : 3 Month
Role : Design/Development

Logon Server is one of the most important application servers that co-ordinates the database operations with “Graybox” and “Risk Manager” clients. It is intended to minimize the number of ports opened on the Database server, thus by requesting the database on behalf of the Client applications. The entire communication between Clients and Logon Server is using IOCP (Input Output Completion Ports). Both Requests and Responses are transmitted in the form of custom XML packets, which are parsed and interpreted by the respective applications. The data transmitted is also compressed using ZLIB

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications, Effort Estimation, Project scheduling
• Design and Development
• System Testing, Load/Stress Testing and deployment

11/2007 – 4/2009

Rediff.com (NASDAQ: REDF) is one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services. Rediff.com provides a platform for Indians worldwide to connect with one another online. Rediff.com is committed to offering a personalized and a secure surfing and shopping environment. Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian American community one of the oldest and largest Indian weekly newspapers, India Abroad. Founded in 1996, Rediff.com is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and New York, USA.

Project : Rediff Updater
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional, .Net
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Inno Setup
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : 1 Month
Role : Design/Development

Rediff Updater is a centralized application that has the responsibility of synchronization of various desktop applications owned by Rediff.com, like Toolbars, BOL, iShare, Cricket Scorecard etc.
The client applications core engine communicates with the server for updates on any of the desktop application updates. The application is also intended to be used for promotions.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client (Rediff Product Management team) and development team.
• Updater-Application interface design.
• Maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Nullsoft Install System.

Project : Rediff.com Secure Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Type : Delivery/Evaluation
Platform : Windows XP Professional, .Net, CentOS
Software : MFC VC++, COM, Win 32 API, PHP, MySQL, CDB
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Inno Setup
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : 6 Months
Role : Design/Development/Delivery

The toolbar is built with an aim that certain personalized features can be provided to rediffmail clients as a value added service. With such personalized services, Rediff aim to position themselves ahead of their existing competition. Rediff Secure Toolbar offers the differentiating features of providing the browsing user with:

• A secure browsing experience – Phish-proof browsing and secure online payment processing
• Enhanced interface to Rediff-promoted services – Rediff Search, Rediffmail Notifications and Integration with Rediff Bol.

The security-related features are made possible by virtue of integrating the Toolbar with APC feed from NetCraft.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation.
• High and low level design.
• Setting up the mechanism to get the Anti-Phish feed and updating the database.
• Ensuring the timely delivery of various components
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.

Project : Rediff.com Secure Toolbar for FireFox
Type : Delivery/Evaluation
Platform : Windows XP Professional, CentOS
Software : XML, XPI, XUL, PHP, MySQL, CDB
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, JIRA, FireFox XPI
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : 4 Months
Role : Design/Development/Delivery

The Rediff.com Toolbar for Firefox compliments its Internet Explorer counterpart.
Saud’s role in this project includes:
• High and low level design.
• Ensuring the timely delivery of various components

Project : REsktop Search – Rediff Desktop Search
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional, Microsoft .Net 2.0
Software : C#, Lucene.net 1.9, Microsoft Office InterOp
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, Inno Setup, Visual Studio 2003/2005, MAPI
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : 6 Months
Role : Architect/Project Manager

REsktop Search stands for Rediff Desktop Search, is aimed at enhancing the user experience while performing the desktop searches. The project performs an index based searching. The index creation is done using Lucene’s .Net version called Lucene.net. The application also takes care of updating the index while the base file system change occurs. MAPI is used to index Microsoft Outlook contents.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation.
• High and low level design.
• Implementing the Indexing, Searching, Index Updation pieces.
• Crawling the outlook (pst) files using MAPI.
• Ensuring the timely delivery of various components
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using MSI

Project : Rediff Tools - AppBar and ScoreCard
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC, VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Inno Setup
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : 2 Months
Role : Design/Development

Rediff AppBar is aimed to integrate Rediff Desktop Applications into a single component pluggable to user’s desktop. The AppBar that’s usually present on the left hand side of user’s desktop, integrates with Rediff BOL and Rediff Desktop Search as the desktop application. It also provides an ease access to various Rediff online services.
Rediff Cricket Scorecard is a Scorecard ticker that shows updated scores, while a Cricket match is going on.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• Design and Development
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Nullsoft Install System.

Project : Crawlers
Type : Maintenance
Platform : Windows XP Professional, Microsoft .Net 1.0
Software : Core Java
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, Eclipse
Client : Rediff.com
Duration : Ongoing – as and when required
Role : Programmer

Crawlers are software programs that fetch relevant information from across the web and help organization build a relevant database. Of several crawlers written, each performs a specific function, such as fetching data from a specific site and populating database.

4/2006 – 10/2007

IVY Comptech Pvt Ltd. based in Hyderabad, INDIA, is a premier provider of software products and solutions to the global online gaming industry. IVY Comptech is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PartyGaming, one of the world’s leading online gaming companies which owns and operates PartyPoker, the world’s largest online Poker business.

Project : PartyPoker.com – Quick Redeposit/Dynamic Download
Type : Enhancement
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, CVS, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming/ITV
Duration : 2 Months (ongoing)
Role : Lead/Design/Developer

Quick Redeposit – Currently, if players run out of the money, they need to go to cashier page and need complete the cash deposit(s). Quick deposit aims to ease the process and reduce the turn around time for deposits. It lets players to make a quick deposit directly from the table with out having to leave the table. This also makes the money available to the players immediately on the table(s).
Dynamic download – is an attempt to make the client installer lighter and make the client smart enough to request for the required resources at run time. The mechanism also helps in:
1. Avoid a full upgrade in case when smaller units of application changes (such as Image changes, new image addition, text files changes etc)
2. A full upgrade should be given only in case there are changes in the DLL or EXE … or some of Lobby components change
3. The application should be smart enough to perform a prioritized download, i.e. components that are more important should be downloaded before any components of less importance

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• ARA-Cashier interface and ARA-GRA interface design.
• Being a part of the coding team for ARA-Cashier interfacing and ARA-GRA interfacing
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.com – PartyPokerSearch.com
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, CVS, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 2 Months
Role : Lead/Design/Developer

This project has two components in it:
1. Search bar in the Client
The search bar would be placed on the main lobby of the poker client, which would provide the ability to search a particular search pattern
On Submit of the Search query:
a. Records the search string entered by the user for analysis
b. Launches a browser window in which the search results would be displayed to the user
2. Party Search Assistant
The application actually monitors the address bar of Internet Explorer to identify the searchable strings

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team
• Design and development of ARA-Server interfacing and ARA-GRA interfacing
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2

Project : PartyPoker.com – Embedded Messaging
Type : Enhancement
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, CVS, Microsoft Office, JIRA, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 1 Month
Role : Lead/Design/Developer

Embedded Messaging is aimed to reduce the number of message exchanges between client and server. It also allows Players to carry on with their game without any promotional dialogs popping on the screen.
Embedded Message representation on the client is an overlay (Semi-Transparent) child window on the playing area on the game table where the promotions are presented. On a single click on the promotion a set of operations are carried out, which would otherwise need user to go through various windows/dialogs.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• Design and Development of Client-Server interfacing and component design for overlay.
• Code Review, Debugging and Bug Fixing.
• Version Control, Source Control and Administration using SVN.
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.net – “AdSales”
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 3 Months
Role : Designer/Developer

“AdSales” project is a complete change over as far as the legacy systems in the organization are concerned. It is a complete paradigm shift in terms of revenue generation. Unlike the existing systems, where the focus was gambling, it looks at Advertisement business for adding another vertical for the organization. This came into picture to target the geographic regions where gambling is not legal, and hence is expected to be a major business component.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• Involvement in “AdSales” Application Design.
• Rearrange various components to accommodate new components in the screen – screen redesign.
• Coding the business logic and implementing the user interfaces.
• Design and executing unit test cases. Debugging and Bug Fixing.
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.com – MultiCurrency
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 4 Months
Role : Developer

MCization is an extension to MLization project of PartyPoker. The major objective of this project is to let the user/account holder to be able to deposit the money into his/her PartyAccount using an account currency (e.g. JPY – Japanese Yen) and to be able to play the games in a Game Currency (e.g. USD – US Dollars). It also involves the customization of several components such as Tool Tip Control.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• Involvement in MultiCurrency Application Design.
• Design and executing unit test cases. Debugging and Bug Fixing.
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.com/EmpirePoker /PartyPoker.Net “MLization Phase-1/2/3”
PartyGammon MLization – Russian Implementation
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, CVS, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 10 Months
Role : Developer
PartyPoker.com/EmpirePoker.com/PartyPoker.Net is the major product of PartyGaming Plc. This project is an internationalization phase for PartyPoker.com. PartyPoker.com is world’s largest online poker room. However, PartyPoker.net is known as world’s largest Poker training school .Empire Poker .com is just another skin of PartyPoker.com, though it runs from a different server. The languages of focus in this phase are English and German.
“Phase-2” is a continuation of PartyPoker.com “MLization Phase -1”. The focus in this phase is on localization to Russian, French, Brazilian – Portuguese and Spanish.
“Phase-3” focuses on localization to Danish, Finnish, and Swedish.
The project brings in Multiligualization into PartyGammon product with its Russian implementation.

Saud’s role in these project(s) includes:
• Involvement in Multilingual Application Design.
• Integrating MFC libraries with MSLU (unicows.dll) to achieve internationalization.
• Developing project modules in integration with MFC MSLU libraries.
• Carrying out unit testing. Debugging and Bug Fixing.
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.com – “MPBJ in Poker”
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API
Tools : SVN, Microsoft Office, Bugzilla, Ghost Installer 4.2
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 2 Months
Role : Lead/Designer/Developer

PartyPoker.com is the major product of PartyGaming Plc. MPBJ – stands for Multi Player Blackjack – it is one of the Casino games and is a part of Casino games suite from PartyGaming called “PartyCasino”. “MPBJ in Poker” project is entitled towards porting of MPBJ in Poker. It deals with Inter-Process Communication at client level and across Server communication at server level.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Analysis, Design and Development of the complete application.
• Debugging and Bug Fixing.
• Version control, Source Control and administration using SVN.
• Creation and maintenance of Installers, Upgraders and Future Upgraders using Ghost Installer 4.2.

Project : PartyPoker.com Virtual Server
Type : Development
Platform : Windows XP Professional
Software : MFC VC++, Win 32 API, Platform SDK, Windows Socket, OpenSSL
Tools : Microsoft Office
Client : PartyGaming
Duration : 2 Months
Role : Lead/Design/Developer

PartyPoker.com Virtual Server is an attempt to mimic the PartyPoker.com Actual Server that is written using Java technology and deployed on Unix Environments. The approach is to identify the actual flow of Client-Server communication for various client events (e.g. HandShake, Login, Logout etc…). Once this is identified, capture the event message from the client on the virtual server and send the corresponding sequence of responses to the client.
The communication between PartyPoker.com Client and PartyPoker.com Virtual Server happens via Windows Socket as underlying communication mechanism and Secure Socket Layer as the upper layer for communication.

Saud’s role in this project includes:
• Requirement Analysis, Effort Estimation, interfacing between the client and development team.
• Identify and design the approach for Virtual Server.
• Design and develop Server side Socket communication layer and the UI layer.
• Involved in the coding phase for various Client-Server communication messages.
• Carrying out integration testing. Debugging and Bug Fixing.