Nicolas Kruchten, Eng.

17-5145 Ch Cote-St-Luc, Montreal, QC, H3W 2H5
(514) 951-7977, nicolas@kruchten.com

Career History

Sep 2010 (ongoing)	Software Engineer, Recoset Developing data-driven real-time bidding algorithms to purchase online display advertising.
Oct 2008 to Aug 2010	Operational Performance Specialist, Bell Mobility Developed business intelligence software for the Radio Access Network division to support process improvement initiatives by collecting, reconciling, analyzing and visualizing business metrics (network performance, unit costs, cycle times) from various enterprise databases. Received VP Award for innovative Value-Stream Mapping software to support an $800M network deployment, as well as numerous Peer-to-Peer Recognition Awards for various software tools.
Oct 2004 to Oct 2008	Software Engineer & Vice President, Kruchten Engineering Services Ltd. (KESL) Co-founder and Principal of this profitable company, doing software/IT consulting. Two major contracts are detailed below, and others included the development of custom numerical analysis tools, online payment systems and content and contact management systems, as well as data-center selection and setup, for various clients throughout North America.
Apr 2005 to Jun 2008 (contract)	Director of Technology, Engineers Without Borders Canada Responsible for all major technology decisions and deployments for this dynamic young non-profit organization (50 staff, $2M budget), part of the 10-member management team. Led in-house development of numerous websites, databases and e-commerce systems. Major personal contributions included myEWB.ca, a mission-critical 10,000-user web application, as well as the championing of IT best practices, often credited for making EWB a sector-leader in IT.
Jan 2005 to May 2007 (contract)	Software Engineer, GTAModel Project, Ministry of Transportation of Ontario Provided software expertise for this large-scale travel demand model of the Greater Toronto Area, used by province and municipalities in planning. Major personal contributions included the modernization of architecture, data structures and algorithms over the previous version of this model.
Apr 2003 to Dec 2003	Software Developer, University of Toronto Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre Developed a powerful and flexible software framework (Galapagos) for running complex evolutionary algorithms distributed over dozens of workstations, in order to solve optimization problems in transportation. This work was documented in undergraduate thesis and later published (see below).

Education and Professional Affiliation

July 2010 (ongoing)	Engineer, Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec Also a member of the IEEE and the ACM. I am committed to my own ongoing professional development and to the development of the field of software engineering. I strongly identify with the Codes of Ethics of the organizations of which I am a member.
Sep 2000 to May 2004	Bachelor of Applied Science, University of Toronto Engineering Science program, Infrastructure Option. Specialized in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Transportation Planning. Graduate-level courses in Planning, Parallel Computing and Statistical Machine Learning.

Skills and Assets

Demonstrated ability to effectively develop/integrate software in .Net (VB & C#), Java (J2SE & J2EE), SQL, Python, Perl, C++, Unix shell languages
Expertise in web application design and development : HTML/CSS/JavaScript, PHP, Servlets, various client and server web development frameworks
Committment to software engineering best practices, agile methods, unit testing, source control, deployment automation
Experience with parallel and distributed systems, as well as artificial intelligence techniques: neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, machine learning
Some experience with scientific computing platforms: MATLAB, SciPy, R, Mathematica, Maple
Excellent problem-solving and research skills, natural curiosity, willingness and ability to learn fast
Strong organizational, teamwork and leadership skills; experience in multidisciplinary project leadership and management
Experience in systems engineering, requirements capture, analysis and modeling, integration, and performance and stability optimization
Strong grasp of computer science principles, algorithms, data structures and their applications in systems engineering
Ability to use and administer Windows, Linux and MacOS servers, networks and workstations
Triple citizenship: Canada, United States, France (European Union)
Fully bilingual in English and French, basic ability in Japanese (4 years of training, two exchange trips to Japan)

Open-Source

Most of my work belongs to my current or previous employers, or cannot be open-sourced due to other copyright issues (not for lack of trying), but I have released two pieces of software to the world: PHPTab and OpenMyEWB. Code samples for my other work is available upon request even if they cannot be fully open-sourced at this time.

Publications

Roorda, M. J., Miller, E. J., & Kruchten, N. J. (2006). Incorporating Within-Household Interactions into Mode Choice Model with Genetic Algorithm for Parameter Estimation. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1985, TRB, Washington DC, pp.171-179. doi: 10.3141/1985-19.

Abdulhai, B., Kruchten, N. J., & de Koning, D. (2004). Galapagos: Development Platform for Distributed Parallel Genetic Algorithms for Computationally Demanding ITS Optimization Problems. Paper presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Washington, DC.