Hi, and welcome to my digital resume! This is to show all my skills, talents and passions that don’t fit into a traditional, 3 Page Resume. If you want to see my professional, PDF version, please feel free to reach out to me at: erik@tults.com. I am not putting it up here for privacy reasons, (I don’t want people to see my personal phone number, current place of work, etc.).
My primary, practical skills can be laid out in four distinct fields, software engineering, cyber security, systems engineering and science. I have more talents than this, if you are curious, feel free to reach out and ask.
Software Engineering
My software engineering skills are various and deep. I have experience in different styles of languages, such as functional and object oriented, as well as concurrent and distributed systems, machine code and SQL. In addition to this, I also have experience in various tools on the Microsoft Development Suite, including PowerBI and AccessDB.
I am familiar with a variety of different languages, with my favourite languages being Python, C++ and Haskell. In saying this, I am a believer in different languages being useful for different tasks, in much the same way that a hammer and a drill are both useful, but not for the same thing. For example, when developing my maze generator project, I found that the algorithm I was using was recursive, and it turns out that Python3 has a maximum recursion depth. This meant I had to restart the project and build it in Haskell instead. I later re-wrote the algorithm in python as well, just to test my ability to adapt algorithms to suit my needs. Also, for the sake of making things pretty on this website, I have also adapted it to Javascript, as you can see below. For more in depth Discussion about my projects and skills, navigate to the relevant pages above, or for more info on the maze project, see here.
Cyber Security
Since I was a child I have despised somebody telling me "You can't do that". I love to be able to do something that everyone else thinks is impossible. Cyber security (and physical security) have fed that desire in me. I love penetration testing and all of its forms, as it feels like a challenge to me personally - someone crying out and saying, just try and take it from me. One Christmas, my father got me a combination lock for my push-bike, however it came without the combination. I spent Christmas morning brute forcing the lock until I figured out the combination. Luckily - it was something early on, 2544. That afternoon, I decided I will never again be stuck behind a lock, combination or otherwise and devoted myself to learning about lock picking and getting through obstacles. This desire has stuck with me since, and has well translated to my interest in cyber security. Lock picking and cyber security are to me, two sides of the same coin. The same desire to get through a locked door, is the same as getting into a web server, or discovering some vulnerability in everyday software.
To satisfy my cyber security passion I have completed all the challenges on DVWA, I regularly play HTB (as of writing this I am currently Rank 635 world wide), as well as listen to a variety of media on current issues in the cyber security world. My favourite challenges in my professional career have been when responding to incoming threats, or engaging in real world cyber attacks. Having to figure out, respond to, and fix a threat in real time, while helping Clients and Customers, was exactly the kind of fast paced, high pressure environment I thrive in. As always, for more info, click on the relevant tabs above.
Systems Engineering
Systems engineering my bread and butter, where I have made my mark in my professional career. Through my course as a systems engineer I have had experience with many projects, ranging from Hosted Exchange Management, Building Bridges between various messaging Protocols, management of niche medical software, to server maintenance, management and design as well as all of the bureaucracy in between. As proof of my prowess and experience, I have set this website up, using the standard LAMP stack, and wordpress (because I am not much of a graphics artist, and wordpress can do most of the heavy lifting for me there). I also host my own private mail server, based on the iredmail suite and have my own private lab environment for testing out my skills in a safe, risk free environment.
In my career, I have developed a variety of skills. This includes, AD Management, Linux and Windows Administration, server design, build and setup, administration of network equipment, and safe sanitization and destruction of Business Critical data according to the AGISM. I have achieved certifications in Microsoft Modern Desktop Management and CompTIA Security+. For more information about my skills here, feel free to reach out to me. For confidentiality reasons, I have been specifically vague about my projects and work here, and I will not be adding it to my website, however, I am happy to discuss it with you in person.
Physics, Maths and Science
My Secret love in life is maths, physics and science. To understand the world, everything, and its nitty gritty details is something I have always been passionate about. I graduated highschool on the state Honour Roll for mathematics, and topped my classes for maths, physics, english, history and chemistry. In university, I studied Physics and Mathematics (as well as software engineering and cyber security), however I quickly realised that it was difficult to have a successful career in science and academia, so I transitioned to my secondary passion, computing, software engineering and IT.
Science has given me a powerful toolset, that helps me to stand-out from others in my career. Physics has taught me about problem solving in a unique light as well data analysis and manipulation in unique ways. I have built several custom graphing engines to help demonstrate data in a simpler and more intuitive way for reports, as well as written simulations for planetary gravity/ escape velocity and inertial double pendulums.
Data analysis has also helped me with many webscraping tasks, as the ability to control and pull data in that fashion has been invaluable. The problem solving and the maths skills that have been developed during my degree are ones that I have pulled on regularly during my career.