| c/o 508 Duke St West | paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca |
| Kitchener, ON, N2H 3Y8 | http://pnijjar.freeshell.org/tag/tech |
| https://github.com/pnijjar | https://www.linkedin.com/in/pnijjar |
Systems administration (approximately SAGE Level III) and user support for an ambitious nonprofit with a frugal budget. IT infrastructure ranges from employment counsellor workstations to medical clinics, with lots in between. A few highlights:
Upgrade and re-architect on-premises Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange infrastructure.
Sanitize and isolate network infrastructure (pfSense, Cisco switches); connect six remote locations into one domain (OpenVPN, DFS); enable employees to work safely from home (OpenVPN, Hamachi, BigBlueButton).
Develop automated installers (Windows WAIK, Debian/Ubuntu preseeding) and package deployment (WPKG, Saltstack, WSUS, wsusoffline) while maintaining license compliance.
Research and deploy monitoring (ELKstack, Nagios, Cacti, and others) and ticketing (Request Tracker) systems for internal IT use.
Script Windows update infrastructure to work around rollback software deficiencies (Powershell).
Develop streamlined waiting list/alerting webapp and desktop client (Django, wxPython). Complete major redesign of https://www.theworkingcentre.org (Drupal).
Mentor coworkers and help them solve their issues; patiently helped end-users of all skill levels.
Write end-user documentation about viruses and spyware (Sphinx). See: https://theworkingcentre.github.io/win7-avoid-viruses/
Maintain phone infrastructure (mostly legacy Norstar equipment, some VoIP, some Asterisk).
Taught several first-year computer science courses, ranging from ACM CS0 (how to use computer applications) through ACM CS2 (introductory data structures and algorithm analysis). Worked to engage students and improve their experience (for example, by getting login shells changed from csh to tcsh in computer labs). Some comments:
“Explained work very well. Never hesitated to go over stuff to ensure we understood.”
“I liked the demos, his humour. He was very down to earth and was like an equal. I also appreciated that he took comments after classes and acted on those comments to improve the course for us.”
Class sizes ranged from 20-100 students, and were usually coordinated with teaching assistants and other lecture sections.
Taken on assorted community-oriented tech projects. A few highlights:
University of Waterloo, 1999-2004. Supervisor: Dale Schuurmans.
Thesis topic: “An Attempt to Automate NP-Hardness Reductions via Second-Order Existential Logic.”
University of Toronto at Mississauga, 1995-1999
Honours B.Sc with High Distinction. Major: Computer Science. Minors: Mathematics, English.