Chris Fox

Can Tho, Cần Thơ, Vietnam

Member since January 11, 2013

Chris has over twenty-five years of experience in software development and architecture in a wide variety of operating systems, languages, and development environments. His specific expertise lies in software concurrency, cryptography and threat analysis, and data modeling.

C C++Microsoft Windows iOS SDK Xcode SQL Objective-C Visual Studio iOS Bluetooth C#Windows CE Cryptography ASP.NET Lua Show more

Chris is now available for hire

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Portfolio

MarchingOrder
C#, .NET, LINQ, Entity Framework
Automagic Apps
AppleScript, Objective-C, Omnifocus
Doozie, LLC (via Toptal)
iOS, Xcode, Firebase

Experience

C, 20 years
Microsoft Windows, 20 years
Multithreading, 20 years
C++, 20 years
Objective-C, 4 years
Xcode, 4 years
iOS SDK, 4 years
Lua, 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Mac OS, Xcode

The most amazing...

...software I've built optimized bids on federal construction projects, reducing run-time from billions of cosmic lifetimes to a half second.

Employment

Lead Server Developer
2016 - PRESENT
MarchingOrder
- Maintained, debugged, and coded new features for a system assisting university graduation ceremonies.
- Wrote documentation.
- Analyzed performance bottlenecks.
- Set up staging servers.
- Made logging a central part of performance analysis.
Technologies: C#, .NET, LINQ, Entity Framework
Macintosh Developer
2012 - 2017
Automagic Apps
- Learned Macintosh programming and AppleScript in advance of the project.
- Wrote a status-bar item application and created workarounds for numerous bugs in the responder chain for control-key embellished keystrokes.
- Determined a method for extracting data from the Omnifocus application using AppleScript.
- Wrote a logging layer to aid in investigating customer reports of inoperability on some machines.
- Developed extensions for common UI controls to allow keyboard manipulation of controls which previously required a mouse to operate.
Technologies: AppleScript, Objective-C, Omnifocus
iOS Developer
2015 - 2015
Doozie, LLC (via Toptal)
- Built a graphics- and database-intensive dual application.
Technologies: iOS, Xcode, Firebase
iPhone Software Engineer
2012 - 2012
RADIOActive Pte. Ltd.
- Wrote an application for a Malaysian company client to stream radio songs and advertising.
- Developed a background download queue amenable to easy reuse with synchronous and asynchronous download options, caching, aging, and notification-based delivery.
- Learned Facebook SDK and managed to retain compatibility all the way back to iOS 3.2.
- Discovered undocumented recent changes to Twitter. Integrated to the new application and figured out how to get them working by sheer ingenuity (and some guesswork).
- Developed extremely glitzy user interface tricks and animations resulting in a very engaging and original-looking application.
- Wrote an application compatible with extremely old versions of iOS including handing in-code features not available until later versions.
Technologies: Objective-C, Facebook SDK, Twitter SDK, JSON, Xcode, BASS Audio
Sole Proprietership
2011 - 2012
FoxWare Can Tho
- Learned Objective-C and iOS development in a matter of weeks (on my own initiative).
- Wrote a cryptography library to expose the use of keychain, symmetric, and asymmetric encryption, hashing, and signing, all via simple API calls.
- Wrote the first password generator in the App Store to synchronize multiple installations using iCloud.
- Wrote the Photo World application using geotagged public photographs and iOS map objects to fetch and display photos chosen by location, tags, date taken, and many other parameters (rated 4.8 stars in the App Store).
- Utilized numerous background processes and multithreading to hide network latency behind active and visible user experience.
Technologies: iOS, Xcode, FlickrSDK, JSON
Senior Software Engineer (Contract)
2009 - 2010
Real Networks, Inc.
- Assumed responsibility for game installer at the core of the division's revenue.
- Extended an installer based on limited scripting language with 8-bit characters to install on all Windows-supported languages.
- Supported applications for other teams, working with a variety of languages and technologies.
- Wrote Lua extension DLLs in C++ to make use of Windows frameworks (previously not available in Lua).
- Wrote extensive documentation of the project with detailed explanations of operation to ease the transition of company offices.
Technologies: Lua, C++, C#, Visual Studio
Senior Software Engineer DRM
2006 - 2008
WildTangent
- Handled all DRM issues for a game distribution company.
- Developed numerous content-protection schemes and improved such schemes constantly to counter hacking challenges.
- Developed software to "inject" DLLs into games whose source code we did not have, working only with released binaries, hooking API calls and overriding them with my own code.
- Developed a system to hide files requiring license purchase prior to use so games could not "see" them in the file system.
- Wrote code to load and decrypt large files superior in performance to native API calls.
- Wrote a logging layer to work directly with testers and bypass cumbersome bug-reporting/triage systems.
Technologies: C++, Visual Studio
Senior Software Engineer DRM
2002 - 2006
Microsoft Corporation
- Handled individualization servers underlying the entire Microsoft Media Player DRM initiative, including ownership of most protected decryption keys in use by the company.
- Wrote a portability layer allowing DRM porting kit for portable devices to be used on MP3 players with extremely unusual CPUs, with bytes of 16 or even 24 bits (achieved 95% functionality upon the first test).
- Designed a certificate chain for all content protection on Windows Vista.
- Worked closely with Singaporean company to solve performance issues on a specific processor and rewrote algorithms from O(3) to O(1) after determining problem.
- Managed to produce an extremely slipshot check-in system (which, in the end, was so frustrating to use that some entire hallways were emptied by resignations).
- Wrote and patented license synchronization and metering features for Windows Media Player 10 and 11.
Technologies: Internal MS tools, Visual Studio, Windows Media Player, C++, C

Experience

Photo World (Development)
Developed iOS application which uses the Maps API and allows viewing of public geotagged photos on social networking sites based on GPS current or selected location, photo tags, date taken, and many other parameters. Very popular with users (rated over 4.5 stars).
iKeyRing (Development)
Created iOS application for Password Storage with iCloud synchronization between installations.
NotifEye for Facebook (Development)
Facebook monitoring application, listens for mention of search terms or hashtags either in public or friends' streams. Background operation and notifications; "never miss a mention."
Why Writing Software Design Documents Matters (Publication)
https://www.toptal.com/freelance/why-design-documents-matter
If you're an experienced developer, you've probably progressed from being a humble tester to a senior developer, and if you're a freelancer, you've made another leap, perhaps the biggest of them all, when you started working with clients directly. Some clients aren't in the software business; they're in an entirely different industry that needs a piece of software, and they don't have a clear and precise vision of what they want from you. This is a far greater challenge than it appears, and here's what you can do to improve client communication and project documentation.

Skills

Languages
C#, C++, C, FQL, SQL, Objective-C, Lua
Frameworks
iOS SDK, ASP.NET, Core Data
Tools
Xcode, Visual Studio
Paradigms
Concurrent Programming
Platforms
Microsoft Windows, Windows CE, iOS, Android
Other
Content Protection, Multithreading, Documentation, Bluetooth, IIS, Cryptography, BLE
Libraries/APIs
Facebook SDK, Twitter API