Principal Member of the Technical Staff, 1990 January – 1998 October
Citigroup Advanced Development Group
formerly: 12731 W. Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066
Citigroup’s Advanced Development Group ADG (formerly TTI) developed systems that delivered Citibank financial products and services (Citibanking) to its customers and staff. ADG products include automated teller machines, home banking, and branch systems. ADG delivers these products to Citibank and its customers throughout the world.
Summary
Nik led and participated in many teams within several groups during his 9 year tenure at Citigroup.
When he first joined the Media Technology group in early 1990, Nik provided video drivers for a few of the available IBM PC video cards, and integrated first those and then other primitives into the Smalltalk-80 virtual machine VM, whose sources TTI had licensed from ParcPlace Systems. Based on his working video drivers, Nik ported Smalltalk-80 first to MS-DOS and then to MS-Windows. The HyperVu project developed a proprietary hypermedia application prototyping environment for Smalltalk-80, including the integration of then novel digital media: digital images, digital audio and video, animated graphics, and text.
While a member of the Development Productivity group, Nik led some teams pioneering object-oriented development within TTI, including projects using Smalltalk and C++. The group developed components for One Step Relationship Opening OSRO, Home Services Delivery System HSDS, the MailView front end for CitiMail, and an automated regression testing tool.
While in the Global Software Products group, Nik led and mentored many more teams adopting object-oriented development techniques, and participated in several teams developing solutions. He participated in the teams that defined the next generation architecture for Citibank’s financial service delivery systems based on the Windows NT operating system. The new NT-based architecture provided the foundation for all future Citibank delivery systems, including automated teller machines, home banking systems, branch teller staff systems, and internet-based banking systems.
Nik led and mentored a team of 10 developers in the design and development of several financial device handlers, including card reader, cash dispenser, depositor, statement printer, and tamper switch monitor. Nik designed and developed a library of C++ classes that encoded requests and decoded responses used as part of the software infrastructure for the Citibank SmartCard pilots. He also participated on the team that defined the company standards of practice and metrics to achieve level 3 of the Software Engineering Institute SEI Capability Maturity Model CMM, especially regarding analysis and design processes, but also traceability, project management, coding standards, and tools.
While a member of the Horizon Planning group, Nik helped develop strategic objectives for e-Commerce, especially the use of smart cards in the context of electronic wallets and the use of Secure Electronic Transaction SET protocols. Nik developed models for multi-modal biometric identification services, including enrollment and verification. The models provided the basis for integrating all kinds of biometric identification data, including (but not limited to) fingerprints, voiceprints, iris scans, facial scans. Nik also continued to advise and support the other developers at ADG and provide working code, esp. with respect to smart cards and JavaCard.
At the end of his tenure with ADG, Nik participated in the US government General Services Administration GSA Chip Card Pilot. He designed and developed a facility for JavaCard applet installation and personalization. The applet download facility ADF complied with the Open Platform specifications established for JavaCard by Visa International.
* Served as a thought leader and lead software developer and mentor
* Co-architect for a platform used in ATM and home banking systems
* Co-designed and built various support libraries in C, C++, Java, Smalltalk
* Designed and built smart card interface libraries with C++, Java, JavaCard
* Built an experimental digital media exploration tool with Smalltalk, C