Aric Fedida
 
 
About Myself
Name: Aric Fedida
Age: 35 years old
Status: Married
Location: Tel-Aviv, Israel
Occupation: Software Engineer
MY CONTACT
Email: aric@fedida.com
Instant Messaging:
    ICQ: 104495
    Yahoo: skaagebe
    AIM: skaag
    MSN: skaag@hotmail.com
    GTalk: countz@gmail.com
Phone: +972-54-2180905
Fax: +972-3-5480854
MY FAVORITES
Books: The great book of Amber, Breakfast of Champions, All of Terry Pratchet, C++ by Bjarn Stroustroup, Neuromancer, Wintermute, SnowCrash, The Diamond Age, The selfish gene, etc.
Writers: Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Terry Pratchet, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov
Quote: “Time is the fire in which we burn”
Food: Sushi, Moroccan, French, Italian, and my own inventions
Travel Destinations: France, England, USA, Cyprus, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Austria, Slovak Republic, USA
Languages & Tech
Languages: C++, C, Java, PHP, Ruby, Perl.
Operating Systems: Mac OSX, Linux Debian/Ubuntu
Frameworks: Symfony (PHP), Rails (Ruby), Pear (PHP)
Others in no particular order: ImageMagick, GD, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Sqlite, Crypto, Hardware Systems, Telephony, Communications, TCP/IP, File formats, Exotic Protocols, Electronics & Processors, Signal Processing, and more. (not for buzz!; it's here for the sake of search engines)
Philosophy: from “The art of Unix Programming” - write small components that work well together!
 
 
 
Producing Insanely Great Products
My first encounter with software was at the age of 9 when I found myself copying Basic code from a book into a Spectrum ZX80. I did not have storage means at the time, so I had to retype the code into the machine every time I wanted to play poker or checkers. I slowly began tweaking the code, until finally I could write my own software. It was a wonderful and mysterious world for me back then, and so it remains to this day (and no less of a mystery!).
 
When I was much younger, I seemed to focus on the beauty of the code itself. My code writing would become more neat, organized and efficient, as my programming skills evolved.
 
It is only later that I learned that the code is only part of the whole, and that it takes much more than beautiful code to create a great product. Today I am much more product oriented, targeting the end user and the way they experience the product, emotionally and practically.
 
I obviously admire Apple products for the reasons above, and I believe I am getting very close to reaching that kind of quality in the products I produce.
 
Work Experience
2 Years, Founder, InterWallet Ltd. (www.interwallet.com)
Time:     2 Years
Goals:    To develop an advanced electronic wallet system that uses Open Source software and technologies, and license this wallet to be used in countries where it is most needed, effectively creating a world network of inter-connected wallets.
Technologies:    PHP, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Ajax, Memcache, PHP-APC, MVC
 
Jobs & Achievements
 
  1. Successfuly launched an electronic wallet in Israel, which is used for person to person money transfers, and payments for merchants who want to start billing immediately with minimal integration. Coming soon: UK, Hong Kong, Jordan.
  2. Recruitment & Management of a great team of software developers.
  3. Managed the IT aspect of the company, wiki, documentation, vision, software & hardware specifications.
  4. Travelled abroad and made deals with partners, distributors, resellers, banks, credit card issuers, money transfer networks, etc.
  5. Managed contracts and integration efforts with financial institutions such as credit card companies, Israeli banks, fraud assessment companies, automatic bank clearinghouse, etc.
  6. Designed a bunch of prepaid products for foreign workers / guest workers to be used for bill payments, internet payments, and global money transfer tool to their families abroad.
  7. Managed the IT infrastructure, Linux servers using Debian Linux. I'm in charge of security, clustering, load balancing, remote backups, updates, CVS, web services and more.
 
 
2 Years, CTO, SafeCharge Ltd. (www.safecharge.com)
Time:    1.5 Years
Goals:    To develop an advanced real-time fraud detection & risk management service and offer it to billing companies and e-commerce companies around the world, in an ASP business model.
 
Technologies:    Solaris/Linux, Java, JSP, Orion, PNUT (for rules execution), Oracle, PostgreSQL, Oracle Darwin (Data Mining Tool)
 
Jobs & Achievements
 
  1. Created a clear and original concept from the vague ideas of the entrepreneurs who initiated the project, presented documents and working scenarios.
  2. Recruitment & Management of a Java Software Development Team.
  3. Creation of a scaling and flexible transaction processing infrastructure.
  4. Creation of a script based rule engine that generated scores similar to what is achieved with baesian math.
  5. Creation of a mathematical algorithm (In conjunction with an external team of mathematicians) that processed historical transactions and generated a statistical model for predicting fraud in future transactions.
  6. Conducted real life experiments with a billing company, and managed to predict fraud with the SafeCharge software.
  7. Managed the IT infrastructure, Sun Solaris servers, Linux servers, etc. Was in charge of security, clustering, load balancing, remote backups, and more.
  8. Managed Oracle databases (Installation, maintenance, performance, backup)
 
 
1.5 Years, CTO, Market.com (www.market.com)
Goals:    To develop an advanced real-time online trading arena for brokers and pro/amateur stock traders. The system should be scalable and handle heavy loads, while being friendly / simple to use, and accessible for non traders.
 
Technologies:    Solaris/Linux, Java, EJB, Oracle, Orion, JSP
 
Jobs & Achievements
 
  1. Created a generic stock trading infrastructure which allows cloning of application servers that perform the same operations (in order to scale).
  2. Recruitment & Management of a Java Software Development Team.
  3. Design of the software in all tiers (From server to database to client site java applets).
  4. Oversaw the User Interface design & development, a task I chose to outsource to an external company with experts in UI / HI development.
  5. Connection of the platform to two different XML based billing systems, together with an internal wallet and cashier system.
  6. Creation of a mathematical algorithm (In conjunction with an external team of mathematicians) that provided stock option pricing according to the stock's performance on the market (Based on historical data).
  7. Establishment of an application server cluster, and a database cluster; distribution of real-time stock data to the cluster through JMS.
  8. Establishment of a data center in the UK that used a combination of Sun Servers & Intel Based Linux Servers, hooking it all up with data feed providers via optical link, management of data contracts & data distribution rights with the various stock exchanges, etc.
  9. Handling of all security aspects, firewalls, VPNs, fault tolerance, etc.
  10. Complete documentation & specification of the project.
  11. Development of a multi-tier affiliate system + ad serving system, including pay-out calculations for affiliates & sub-affiliates.
  12. Previous Work Experience
1 Year, Software Team Leader, Waves Ltd. (www.kswaves.com)
1 Year, Software Team Leader, Veon Ltd. (www.veon.com)
3.5 Years, Software Developer, VocalTec Ltd. (www.vocaltec.com)
3 Years, Software & Hardware Developer, Israeli Defense Force (www.idf.il)