Michael Soulier's CV

Overview

I am a professional software developer, who has been in the industry of software development for over twenty years, starting with Nortel as my first job out of University, and eventually moving to Mitel, working on developing and porting VoIP applications on the Linux platform. I specialize in Unix systems programming and Web applications, primarily, but I have dabbled in many things and I learn quickly.

I believe in developing applications in such a manner that the company that I work for maintains their right to choice of tools and platforms in the future. My choice of tools such as Perl, Python, Ruby and Go demonstrate that portability and lack of “lock-in”, although I have happily developed in C/C++ and maintained the same values.

I believe in doing the job right, and standing up for quality, constantly learning to discover new ways to develop software in the most cost-effective manner possible, while not sacrificing that quality. I have seen many examples of software done, “the wrong way”, with the wrong tools and the wrong values. I draw on those examples of what not to do on every new project.

Qualifications Summary

My qualifications for the job are as follows. For full details on the material in this summary, please refer to the section entitled Experience, and the sections that follow it.

  1. Twenty-two year’s experience with Mitel as a software engineer, working on the Mitel 6000 Managed Application Server (formerly the E-Smith server and gateway), as well as applications on top of that server such as the Teleworker Solution (now MiVoice Border Gateway), Secure Recording Connector, Office Productivity blade, and the IPSec VPN blade. I worked on other add-on blades as well, such as Mobile Extension, Groupware, Instant Messaging, Web Access Control, and others. I have spent much of my time as an internal Linux and technology consultant, helping to port VoIP applications to Linux from Windows and VxWorks, and giving an occasional internal tutorial. Most work was done in Perl, C/C++, Python, Javascript, Go and a little Java. A few years back I spearheaded breaking up MBG into micro-services to run in Kubernetes, and wrote MSL’s ReST interface for remote management.
  2. Four years experience with Nortel, designing software development tools for internal use, both web-based and other, as well as assisting in development of product code. Three internal courses designed and taught to employees during that time as well. Most work was done in Perl, but also included C, C++, Java, Python, PHP and Tcl. Projects included web-design, database integration, Unix Systems programming, automation and Systems Administration.
  3. President and co-founder of the Nortel Linux User’s Group, from its creation until I left Nortel.
  4. Vice President of the Board for the Ottawa Canada Linux User’s Group, 2003-2004.
  5. Co-Founder and Web-Master for the Ottawa Python Author’s Group.
  6. Published author for PyZine magazine, Issues #1 and #3.
  7. B.Sc. Honours Computer Science, McMaster University
  8. B.Sc. Physics, McMaster University
  9. B.Ed. Education, University of Windsor

Experience

Mitel

Since September of 2002, I have been employed by Mitel, starting in the Network Server Solutions Group. This group was formerly a separate company known as E-Smith, acquired by Mitel. I was then moved into the Common Platforms group, and from there to Applications, as they desired my expertise on Linux to port their existing apps.

My responsibilities at Mitel have been as a full-time developer on the SME Server software, performing bug fixes, implementing new features, and performing verification of the various aspects of the server. A wide range of skills have been required to accomplish this, due to the nature of the server, the number of environments it must work within, and the number of internet protocols involved.

As of the layoffs at Mitel late in 2003, I became one of two individuals remaining working on the Mitel 6000 MAS, and it’s associated applications. As such, I shared responsibility for all aspects of the product’s development, from project management to bug tracking, to release and stream management.

I have also been one of the two prime developers on the Mitel Teleworker Solution, enabling teleworkers to connect to their corporate phone network securly via the internet, and a Mitel Networks IP phone, and am currently the project’s development prime.

In 2004 I was made feature prime for a new Traffic Shaping feature on the SX-200 ICP, to enable prioritization of VoIP trunks between remote networks connected via IPSec VPN. I was responsible for all aspects of this feature’s design and development. My System Behavioural Specification is still the definitive internal reference on the subject.

That year on Teleworker I also implemented a plug-in framework to net-snmp, implementing support for Mitel’s proprietary MiB definitions, and leaving full documentation for our other applications to follow. Two additional applications have added SNMP support since, with less than a day’s work required. Coupled with this system was an entire event subsystem, including an events database, SNMP trap support, and a full web interface to the database to view events and clear alarms.

In 2005 I was made the development prime for the Teleworker Solution, and promoted to Engineering Level III. I was also made the integration prime for Mobile Extension, Release 1.0, coordinating ClearCase submissions into coherent builds and packaging the results for Linux deployment. In addition, on that application itself I did a great deal of Java development, including a brand new JNI/C API for interfacing to a legacy database. I also maintained the Ant-based build system, and implemented precompilation of all JSP pages in the Web UI, while assisting with the maintenance of the JSP pages and front-end Javascript.

In 2006 I completed a Teleworker release that added Client-side x509 Certificate support to the server, and upgraded the PKI on the server to a full Certificate Authority, tied-in with Mitel’s root Certificate. This feature taught me a great deal about PKIs, SSL and OpenSSL’s implementation. We added a REST-like web services interface that is now used by multiple third-parties to completely automate client-side certificate requests and importing from their products.

Also in 2006, I moved back from the Applications group to Applications Infrastructure, working again on the evolution of Mitel’s Linux platform, while providing design, direction and APIs for applications to align with. At this time I also began prototyping a new application, the Secure Recording Connector, with the web user-interface done using Ruby on Rails. I chose Rails as a candidate for our web interfaces going forwards, after assessing several solutions in Perl, Python and Java. To help introduce the technology and share my experience, I gave an internal tutorial on Ruby on Rails that year. I then expanded on that talk and gave it at ExitCertified as an OCLUG tutorial. For time-to-market reasons, our legacy web framework was used for this in the end, but the evaluation helped me finally choose Django as the next-generation web framework for the server.

In 2007, I completed work on releases of Teleworker Solution and Secure Recording Connector. New innovations included a self-diagnostic framework in SRC, as well as a desktop graphical reference implementation of a call recording application to integrate with SRC. This desktop application, of which I did the graphical interface, was built on portable libraries and used Gtk+ for the graphical API, which permitted the same code to build for both Linux and Windows desktops.

In 2008 I completely redesigned the Teleworker management layer for a rebranded solution, the Multi-Protocol Border Gateway, using mostly Python and Django. This release removed the roadblocks to scalability that were in place from the original design, and permitted a complete merging of the SRC and MBG code bases in the next releases, to reduce maintenance and improve time to market for both products. As part of this redesign, I implemented a framework for Mitel Standard Linux using Django that is now in common use by application developers for that platform.

In 2009 the Multi-protocol Border Gateway was rebranded to the Mitel Border Gateway, and we released the 5.1 and 5.2 releases of the product. As the underlying software was virtually identical to the Secure Call Recorder, we unified the management layer of the two into a single code base with two deliverables, with hooks for rebranding. We also added suport for SIP trunking and furthered the support for SIP devices. In the meantime, to satisfy a need to permit remote users’ access to selected LAN applications securely, I designed and implemented the Web Proxy, release 1.0 and 2.0.

In 2010 we consolidated SRC into MBG and released the 6.0 and 6.1 releases of the product, further improving SIP trunking support and continuing to evolve the management interface after the merging of the call recording solution. Web Proxy 2.0 was untouched, as there were no field found problems.

In 2011 MBG was enhanced and released as version 7.0, further improving all SIP support, continuing to evolve the management interface and delving into the world of IPv6. MBG has experimental IPv6 support at this time, as worldwide IPv6 adoption is slow. Later in 2011 in 7.1 the bulk of the 7.1 release was finished, enhancing troubleshooting and maintenance or the release, and adding the remote management proxy to the application to permit web-based remote management of Mitel applications. One of the features included in the 7.1 release was a web-based tcpdump and traceroute that I designed and implemented.

In 2012 we continued supporting the 7.1 release, enhancing scaling of SIP trunk deployments for hosted environments, greatly enhanced security in a special 7.2 release, while continuing in the development release of 8.0. The 8.0 release further enhanced SIP interoperability, security, maintenance and monitoring, and remote management capabilities with Mitel’s flagship IP PBX, the Mitel Communications Director.

Development of 8.0 continued in 2013, with inclusion of the ability to upload large MCD images to MBG, to allow remote upgrades of MCD and prevent truck-rolls. In parallel, I implemented a REST Web service for Mitel Standard Linux with plugins for applications, implemented in Perl and Mojolicious. The existing OAuth libraries were insufficient for my purposes, so I wrote my own. Meanwhile, I began playing with the Raspberry Pi, and with the help of a long-time coworker, ported MBG to the Raspberry Pi as an experiment. To achieve this, I redesigned the entire management layer to work on this platform, and wrote a new interface using AngularJS, an impressive new single-page application framework from Google that I’ve come to like. Since then we have supported the Raspberry Pi 3, with a new UI in Vue.js, and a management layer in Python and Go (more on that later).

Work completed in 2013 while maintaining 5 parallel streams, 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, 8.1 and 9.0. Quite challenging for a small development team, but we’ve found that using the appropriate tools goes a very long way, and Git is the appropriate tool here.

In 2014 my team finished up the 8.0 release, and used 8.1 to port it to an updated base MSL operating system. 8.1 also saw the addition of a custom ReST service that I wrote for MSL, written in Perl and using the Mojolicious web framework, with a custom OAuth 1.0a implementation that I wrote myself, as the Net::OAuth module did not seem to be implemented properly. I wrote the ReST framework with plugins in mind, and after MSL’s plugin, MBG’s was next, making use of a back-end Tornodo process to centralize validation in the Django forms and models.

In 2015 we made major user interface changes in MBG in the 9.0 release, fixing performance issues in our event processing by going to an on-demand polling model for system status. Meanwhile the 8.1 version of the ReST framework had to be maintained permanently as version 1 of the API, so I added a new serialization framework that included versioned adapters, so we could continue to make schema changes but present the same ReST API. We also added full Unicode support in the management layer, working around the inability of our core service to understand it. Additional threads were added to the management layer’s event daemon to improve performance, and I began experimenting with C++ and Google Go versions of this daemon, as Python’s performance limitations began to show, including issues with the Global Interpreter Lock in a multi-threaded, multi-core environment.

The 9.1 release continued this theme, and included an overhaul of our metrics graphing subsystem, moving to use jquery-jqplot to make the graphs more live and interactive. This did involve solving some performance problems with large amounts of data, including aggresive caching. 2015 closed out with our start on the MBG 9.2 release, which mostly involved alignment with Mitel’s latest mergers and acquisitions, but for myself included integration of a new webrtc component, to permit anonymous and subscriber calls to our call managers from a simple web browser.

2015 involved the 9.2 and 9.3 releases, incorporating WebRTC functionality in MBG, and support for new call managers from Aastra. In 2016 we completed the 9.4 release with tone injection support, and scaling changes to support 50000 DID rules on a SIP trunk, both in the management UI and ReST interfaces. The 10.0 release primary included configuration enhancements for ease of use, and a plugin framework for adaptation of SIP headers in internal pipelines using the Lua scripting language.

2016 covered the 11.0 release, and experimentation into packaging our software in Docker containers for deployment into the cloud. I headed this re-architecture into microservices, and to this day MBG is the only application within Mitel to truly leverage a microservice architecture.

As of all of this work I am now one of the local GCP and Kubernetes experts within Mitel, for better or for worse. Kubernetes was not a good fit for our solutions, and we warned management about that. Said solution no longer exists.

Over the last few years we have pulled MBG out of K8s, implemented our own WebRTC implementation and greatly enhanced our security profile in a variety of ways. We are currently integrating with Zoom for SIP trunking, and I re-wrote most of our UI to use VueJS 3.0 in the course of one release. Keeping all open-source subsystems updated to avoid security issues is an ongoing challenge.

On the side, I set up and still maintain an internal R&D Wiki and Mailing list server, now used by the bulk of the R&D organization. I have given several internal courses on a variety of subjects, from packaging software using RPM, to perl programming, to introductions to Unix, Ruby on Rails, Django and Git.

We have continued our work on the Raspberry Pi, porting to the RP 3, using a web server written in Google Go. My coworker wrote a C++ API for managing our data transparently in a cluster, which I wrote Go and Python extensions for to use from my code. It is currently an ongoing prototyping environment that we use to determine where we want to product to eventually go, architecturally speaking.

To keep my work flexible I used to mirror all my work into my private Git repositories, pushing them into the corporate-provided ClearCase repositories when appropriate. This kept my full project history available at all times, with or without network connectivity. I advocated this workflow to others internally and externally, and used it on my open-source projects.

Since then I was tasked with building our nightly build system to move us completely out of ClearCase and into a pure Git environment. I built it in Python, and it runs every night on every supported release, automatically picking up changes from developers and building if there are changes to build. It builds the blade, pushing it to our AMC for deployment, and then builds a VMWare .ova file for deploying in the VSphere environment. It then messages our auto-sanity group through an ActiveMQ server to launch their automated sanity suite. I also built our nightly build website using Flask, which displays build status, sanity status, and allows export of the entire load.

Nortel

From 1998 - 2002, I was employed in the 10Gig Optical Division of Nortel in the Global Backbone Transport Development’s Operations, Development and Support department. I resigned in 2002 to join Mitel.

At Nortel, I have maintained a great deal of software ranging from Unix shell scripts, to CGI scripts in Perl, to full applications written in Perl. I rewrote two aging Perl applications to bring them up to date.

The first major redesign was known as “Prepare”, a Perl application responsible for performing all of the build testing on the code that a designer was about to submit to a build, and then packaging and documenting their changes automatically. For this project I was required to go through the entire documentation process of requirements, high-level design and estimates, functional description, design description and test plan. Prepare was last approaching a 2.2 release, with no major outstanding bugs.

The second major redesign I performed was to a tool called “Scaload”, which was responsible for packaging the finished products after a build, and generating the software catalogs used to define a release and permit in-service upgrades, as well as basic commissioning of a network element. For this redesign I eliminated the need for complex, in-house parsing code of configuration files by inventing a language in XML, and using an XML parser. I also combined the many branches of the original code into one branch, preventing the need for code propagation in features and bug fixes, while maintaining branch-specific configuration files for every 10Gig release, to allow each release to customize their catalogs. I found XML a fascinating technology, using it to generate many of my documents as well as being used as the foundational technology for configuration of my last project, a tool-independent software release management system.

After identifying major problems with the organization of the mission-critical web-site that my department controls, I completely redesigned it, replacing it with an organized, consistent site where information is easy to find. Our problem tracking tool additionally did not scale to our uses, being written by a high-school student with a back-end of text files and shell scripts. I redesigned it, and replaced it with a PHP-driven site with a back-end in MySQL, with unlimited possibilities for new features in the future.

On a regular basis, I assisted in development of production code within Nortel for our 10Gig Optera DX product line. In this effort, I assisted with high-level packaging, and occasionally low-level coding issues when the developers found themselves at a roadblock that they could not overcome.

I have also overseen the evolution of some of the tools used in my department, primarily spear-heading the implementation of the latest build of Perl and the evaluation of a new, 3rd party editor, Visual SlickEdit. I also looked after many builds of free software for the design community, building tools like Emacs, Vim, Python, LaTeX, gcc, etc., on HP-UX 9.05 and 10.20 for our use.

I was one of the few people at Nortel using Linux on my desktop machine. With the permission of my immediate supervisor, I installed over the Windows NT machine I was given, and spearheaded an effort to put Linux on the desktop for those at Nortel who felt they had a true business need for it. I was in “negotiations” with our IS groups at Nortel for some time, and was a major stakeholder in Linux on the desktop at Nortel, as well as an advocate for open standards in the workplace.

In addition to my computer science experience, Nortel allowed me to add to my teaching experience gained from the University of Windsor’s teacher’s college by teaching several courses at Nortel. I regularly taught courses in Software Packaging and testing, use of our proprietary configuration management and build system, and use of the “Prepare” testing tool that I designed and wrote. Additionally, I identified a serious lack of knowledge among our design community with basic use of the Unix operating system, so I designed and taught an introductory course in Unix aimed at practical use with solutions to common problems.

Other Relevant Skills

I have a great deal of experience in team environments, and completing a long-term task by a given deadline.

At McMaster University, I completed both a B.Sc. in Physics, and a B.Sc. with Honours in Computer Science. Between the two, I have had a great deal of experience with technology in a research and development environment. The Physics degree augmented my Computer Science knowledge with a strong foundation in electromagnetic and electronic theory, providing me with a much broader base to understand digital electronics than my peers in the Computer Science program. The Computer Science program at McMaster ensured that I have a proper theoretical foundation for software design and development. My Computer Science thesis project was a 3D simulation application using OpenGL and VC++ on Windows NT. We placed in the top three projects of the year.

At the University of Windsor, I learned skills invaluable every time I am called upon to do a presentation, or teach a course internally. I can now apply modern educational theory to my courses, and easily assess the experience level of my audience, adjusting my presentation accordingly during the presentation.

Extracurricular Activities

Outside of my daily work at Nortel, I have not sat still for very long.

OPAG - The Ottawa Python Author’s Group

I am co-founder of the Ottawa Python Author’s Group, or OPAG. This is a group of Python enthusiasts in the Ottawa, Canada area who are attempting to improve their programming abilities, provide a resource to Python developers everywhere, and increase awareness of the Python programming language.

Furthermore, I taught an introductory course on Python for ExitCertified, an IT training firm here in Ottawa.

I also authored the OPAG website, and am hosting it free of charge for OPAG. I had come up with a maintenance scheme to permit other OPAG developers to collaborate via CVS repository, and then Subversion, pushing the site to production via a combination of Bourne Shell, Python and rsync. That is no longer required, as the site is maintained in Git on github now, so I simply service pull requests from other members and serve as integration prime.

NLUG - The Nortel Linux User’s Group

I was co-founder of the Nortel Linux User’s Group, and I was the NLUG President from it’s inception to late 2002 when I left Nortel. Founded in 1999 in Ottawa, NLUG is a group of Linux enthusiasts working for Nortel.

The Nortel Linux User’s Group Ottawa (nlug-ottawa) is a group dedicated to bringing, through Linux, open standard solutions to Nortel Networks employees. These solutions may appear either in a product, as support, data format or on the desktop. We are a group dedicated to software that is reliable, and that does not eliminate your right to choice. We stand for using the right tool every time.

-NLUG Mandate

The Nortel Linux User’s Group has, I’m told, somewhat stagnated since I left Nortel. It would seem that no one has taken the time to push its development, not surprising since most likely everyone at Nortel is working very hard. I am told that I am still listed as President on the website.

OCLUG - The Ottawa Canada Linux User’s Group

I have been a member of OCLUG since 1998, when I first became involved in using Linux for my home computing needs. Over that time, I have become involved in OCLUG events, given talks at OCLUG meetings, tutored classes at ExitCertified via OCLUG, and served as board Vice President from 2003-2004. Please see the OCLUG Homepage for more information, which I was the webmaster for from roughly 2004 - 2006. This is the official thanks from the board for my work during that time.

Home Networking

At home, I have set up and currently maintain a home network of Linux and Windows machines, using one box as a NAT server to permit all machines on the network to share a 1 Meg DSL connection. The NAT server also acted as a web server, name server, mail server and a code repository, as well as running a firewall for security purposes. I used to run two PPPoE connections from the NAT server, using one to connect to Nortel’s corporate intranet to permit me to work remotely, but obviously not since I left Nortel.

I reconfigured my network by replacing my generic Linux NAT box by a Mitel 6000 MAS running on a home PC, such that I might use our own products and ensure that I see problems sooner than our customers do. I virtually hosted three websites on that server, including my blog, a photo gallery, and other third party additions to my site. Since then I have moved these apps off to other online services, as well as a VPS that I pay for through Webfaction.

Additionally, I have added a wireless broadband router to my home network, adding 802.11g support. As the “routers” are actually cheaper than an access point, I added it into my network by having the WAN port receive DHCP from my gateway, hanging all wireless clients off of an additional network. While this causes everything outbound to undergo NAT twice, it offers an extra level of security as well, and it is functioning perfectly.

After a major hardware failure, I reconfigured the network again, using the LinkSys NAT box as my firewall, and placing FreeBSD on a home server on my LAN, portforwarding HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP and SSH to that FreeBSD box. While I am a big fan of Linux, experimenting with other technologies from time to time is a good thing, and FreeBSD is very impressive.

To gain additional networking knowledge on FreeBSD, I then put the FreeBSD box in as my firewall/gateway/NAT box. The PPPoE configuration on FreeBSD is the simplest I’ve seen on any platform, and it ended up being a trivial change that offered far greater control over the LAN’s connection up to the Internet. I’ve also installed the Hexago freenet6 client, and was experimenting running a dual ipv4/ipv6 stack.

Since then I moved all my boxes to Debian stable, beyond the occasional Windows box, and maintain an IPv6 tunnel through Hurricane Electric. The experimentation with other operating systems was educational, but finally I went for ease of maintenance.

Active Activities

I currently hold a red belt in Tae Kwon Do and I get regular workouts at home and with a trainer, as well as attending Yoga classes. I enjoy archery all year round, and during the summer I enjoy cycling and hiking, two things that Ottawa is perfectly suited for. For winter activities, I occasionally snowshoe and I love curling.

Education

Internal Nortel Courses

The following are courses that I attended while working for Nortel, giving internally for Nortel employees.

  • Introduction to PLS
  • Introduction to FrameBuilder
  • Introduction to the Transport CO
  • Prostar Fundamentals
  • Data and Internet Communications
  • Sonet Transport Quality and Processes
  • Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
  • The St-Laurent Plant Tour
  • Introduction to MCE
  • Introduction to Perl Programming
  • CGI Programming in Perl
  • Voice Communications Demystified
  • Advanced Perl Programming
  • Voice Communications Technologies Overview
  • Basic Java Programming
  • Advanced Java Programming
  • Javascript Programming
  • ClearCase Essentials for Unix

Post-Secondary

The following is my post-secondary education.

McMaster University

B.Sc., Honours, Computer Science 1996 - 1998, 1999 - 2000

University of Windsor

B.A. Education 1995 - 1996

McMaster University

B.Sc., Physics 1990 - 1995