Jan Pickard
South African, 26, Computer Engineer, working in alternative payments space
| Headline: | Entrepreneur |
| Work status: | Employed Full-Time |
| Industries: | Biotech, Computing, Financial, Information Technology, Internet, Media, Travel |
| Skills: | Business, C/C++, Computer Engineering, Database Administration, Databases, Electrical Engineering, Embedded systems, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Investment, Java, Languages and Platforms, Software Engineering, System Administration, Windows, Windows applications |
| Location: | London |
| Visas: | UK, SA |
| Interested in: | Brainstorming, Employment opportunities, Finding business partners, Finding cofounders, Finding mentors, Finding team mates, Investing in projects, Joining a startup, Meeting new people, Professional opportunities, Promoting my startups |
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | Ukash |
| Position: | Programme Manager - Communities |
| Time period: | March 2009 - September 2009 |
| Description: | Product development of monetisation offerings for social networks and expanding the Ukash product range into the mobile space. |
| Employer: | Jefferies International Ltd |
| Position: | Intern: Convertible Bonds Trading |
| Time period: | December 2005 - November 2006 |
| Description: | [3 months]
• Wrote trade ideas and research pieces to be used by sales and sent to clients • Developed a financial results database application and implied volatility index for selectable convertible bond universes • Delivered a presentation on trends in synthetic convertible bonds • Offered permanent position after internship |
| Employer: | FinSource Infrastructure Services (Pty) Ltd |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | December 2005 - November 2006 |
| Description: | [1 month]
Maintained a server farm which provides disaster recovery solutions and hosts applications for the financial services industry. Projects included designing and implementing a group antivirus and server tandardisation policy, facilitating the replacement of all domain controllers for a live terminal services Citrix environment |
| Employer: | Curious Questions CC |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | December 2005 - November 2006 |
| Description: | Developed the business concept of an interactive SMS application that uses web based human operators to answer any questions sent via SMS within 5 mins. I designed and programmed the necessary software. A marketing campaign was implemented which featured a radio ad, flyers and promotion events at universities. The software saved the responses to all answers and upon receiving new questions was able to match them with previous answers. The business was therefore able to become more profitable as the database grew and more questions could be answered without human operator intervention. I sold my share of the business to my partner when I moved over to London |
| Employer: | Merrill Lynch International |
| Position: | Analyst: Global Structured Finance & Investments |
| Time period: | December 2005 - February 2008 |
| Description: | • Involved in the execution and structuring of public and private securitisation transactions
• Structured synthetic risk transfer/capital relief solutions for financial institutions and monetisation trades driven by recent credit spread widening • Extensive understanding of Basel II and how to choose and optimise capital relief solutions and structures • Designed cash flow models to run investor scenarios and for use by rating agencies to rate the transactions. Asset classes include corporate loans, consumer loans and residential mortgages • Been actively involved in structuring transactions optimised to create ECB eligible collateral for repo funding • Developed a return on risk equity model for all asset classes under Basel II for principal asset based lending decisions |
| Employer: | PPL Solutions |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | December 2002 - November 2006 |
| Description: | From my experience gained from servicing computer networks since a young age and managing the Picardi Holdings network, I started an IT services company to provide contracted services to a small group of companies and IT consulting to the general public.
The services provided included the full suite of office required IT services. A central server farm was maintained in an office complex in which almost all of the companies serviced were located. Multiple companies were hosted on the server which required customisation to compartmentalise the companies. Skills gained included: • Tailoring IT solutions for differently operated companies • Practical business experience with regard to maintaining client relationships, their expectations and proactive communication • Fault localisation and the solving thereof • Optimising profit through different billing options • Designing and implementing and full IT solution for small companies |
| Employer: | Picardi Holdings (Pty) Ltd |
| Position: | Sole administrator |
| Time period: | December 1999 - November 2003 |
| Description: | Took over company network and maintained it as the sole administrator. The holding company provided various ISP services to subsidiaries connected via Diginet leased lines. Experience included:
• Full WAN deployment and maintenance with customised TCP/IP routing • Firewall maintenance (FreeBSD, MS ISA, Fedora) • Server administration and maintenance on all Microsoft server packages on Windows 2000/2003 • VPN deployment for worker remote access |
INFORMATION
| Sports: | Snow skiing & water sports, Golf, Tennis |
| Hobbies: | • Aviation (Part completed Private Pilots License), Scuba diving (Qualified Advanced Nitrox Diver), Sailing (Skippers license)
• Music (Second clarinet for the symphony orchestra at Beau Soleil Centre for Music) • Finance: Very interested in trading and actively manage a personal portfolio • Business Investments: Involved in a startup aquaculture business and am continuously looking for further private investments or startups |
| Awards: | • Theron Mathematics Scholarship to Diocesan College
• Academic award meriting continuous academic achievement at Diocesan College • Minor bursary to University of Stellenbosch • Invited to join the Golden Key Honours Society (Top 5% in engineering faculty) |
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