Usman Rafique

1022 Nelson Street Vancouver, BC V6E 4S7

Phone: 416-833-9555 E-Mail: usman.rafique.92@gmail.com

Objective
To work as a software engineer and contribute to the ever evolving fields of cloud, mobile and social
computing using my strong technical and academic background

Education
Honours, Bachelor of Applied Science and Engineering
2009 2014
University of Toronto
Major in Computer Engineering (specialization in software)
Certified in Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Small Business Management

Work Experience
Software Development Engineer, Amazon [Vancouver, BC]
August 2014 Present
Working as an SDE in the Payments Platform department, which is engaged in consolidating all
payment services at Amazon, in order to achieve a consistent and optimal payments
experience for all Amazon customers
Started out at Amazon by joining the Payments Portal team, which is the front-end, clientfacing portal to all Amazon customers using payments widgets
o Worked on writing front-end Java-script widget code, as well as backend Java code to
process payment entities and communicate with other services
o Helped integrate new clients with Payments Portal platform, including mobile Kindle
devices, enabling Amazon to expand into China and India regions
Soon afterwards, joined the Purchase Preferences team (due to a reorg-shuffle), which owns all
customer purchase preferences, including One-Click
o Built a completely new service from scratch for sending out notifications to Amazon
clients about changes to customer purchase preferences, making use of various AWS
technologies, such as SNS, SQS, S3, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch
o Enabled Multi-Factor Authentication for Amazon purchases made through customer
purchase preferences in EU, to comply with incoming law changes
Learnt how to put customers at the heart of every design decision and implementation detail,
and write scalable software, to be used by millions of Amazon customers
Gained experience in launching new services, interacting with other services and teams,
debugging live customer issues quickly, and monitoring logs and metrics for service health
Software Development Intern (PEY1), IBM Canada [Markham, ON]
May 2012 August 2013
Worked on developing state-of-the-art, Integrated, Cloud-based, SaaS/IaaS/DBaaS systems
Helped develop IBM PureData for Transactions (PDTx) system, newest member of IBM
PureSystems family, designed to quickly deploy, optimize and manage transactional database
workloads out-of-the-box, reducing setup time, complexity and maintenance costs
Learnt about and designed software deployed in the Cloud
Developed software in Java, Groovy, and Shell for automated OS and Cluster deployment on
a multi-node system in an x86 Bare Metal env, working directly with IBM Flex System H/W
Was the focal point for development of REST APIs for linking the front end with the back end
Worked on backend code development of System Management software
Worked on 3 different teams: DB2 Security, PDTx Deployment and PDTx Management
Offered contract extension after end of internship, to continue working part-time during school

1. PEY = Professional Experience Year (16 month full-time internship)

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Usman Rafique
Phone: 416-833-9555 E-Mail: usman.rafique.92@gmail.com

Technical Skills

Programming languages: Java (3y), C (2y), Groovy (1y), C++ (1y), MATLAB (1y), SQL (1y),
JavaScript (6m), Ruby (6m), Objective-C/Swift (6m), HTML (6m), Verilog (6m), Assembly (6m)
Programming, design & analysis software: IntelliJ Idea, Eclipse, XCode, MATLAB, MS Office Suite,
MS Project, Quartus II, Wireshark, CAD tools, Adobe Photoshop, Google Sketchup
Operating Systems: Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows, Linux (Ubuntu, Redhat, Debian)

Relevant Courses
Computer Systems Programming, Distributed Systems, Algorithms & Data Structures, Operating
Systems, Computer Networks, Internetworking, Computer Organization, Multimedia Systems

Final Year Capstone Design Project

Team Leader, VM Migration Management, U of T
Summer 2013 April 2014
Led a team of 4 students to design, document, program, test, and present the under-research
area of VM migration management, under the supervision of Prof. Christiana Amza
Designed and coded an algorithm to live migrate the maximum number of VMs within a
constraining TTL (time-to-live), on top of open-source Xen framework
Added functionality for 24/7 VM Migration Monitoring and Autonomous Migration
Final design capable of handling on-call migrations based on TTL information, as well as
background migrations based on service degradation thresholds set by the user
Final results show a huge improvement over random migration algorithms
Managed the team progress, integrated the teams code, and collaborated using SVN
Wrote detailed design documents for each milestone, justifying key design decisions,
consequences, and alternatives considered
Design video available at this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3kM-8a02ZA

Other Achievements

Graduated with Honours, University of Toronto

Gold medalist in academics, Yokohama Intl. School [Japan]

2009 2014
2008 2009

Affiliations

Member, Toastmasters International, IBM Canada

Floor President, Chestnut Residence Council, U of T
Member, Amnesty International, Yokohama Intl. School [Japan]

2012 2013
2009 2012
2008 2009

Interests

Playing guitar, listening to music, and performing in front of live audience

Following tech news and staying up-to-date on computer-related technologies
Playing and following basketball and cricket
Travelling and experiencing new places and cultures

Find me on LinkedIn at: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/usmanraf/

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