David C. Leberknight

CURRICULUM VITAE

David is a generalist, a seasoned consultant, the former Principal Solution Architect at IRD NZ, and a world traveler - currently focused on AI / ML. With diverse experience and deep understanding, he quickly integrates into new teams, manages multiple stakeholders, and delivers results.

WORK EXPERIENCE

8090 Solutions, Inc. / Remote from Tauranga, New Zealand
Member of Technical Staff : August 2024 - January 2025

• Optimized AI inference performance on AWS Neuron and Google TPU accelerator chips, targeting best possible tokens per dollar. This involved implementing the mathematics of Large Language Models (LLMs) for High-Performance Computing. Used prompt engineering to help write code. (The entire HPC team was laid off.) Technologies: AWS / SageMaker, PyTorch / Python, XLA, Docker Containers, Git.

CacheQ Systems, Inc. / Remote from Tauranga, New Zealand
Member of Technical Staff : February 2024 - August 2024

• Software Architect for projects targeting AI inference and GPU chips. This includes reverse-engineering NVIDIA / CUDA optimizations for LLM attention, automatically sending PyTorch workloads to the cloud, developing a compiler pass to optimize tensor sharding (with C++ / MLIR), and deploying ML models on AWS.

• Recent certifications: AWS Machine Learning, AWS Solutions Architect, and CompTIA Security+.

Inland Revenue Department / Wellington, New Zealand
Consulting Principal Enterprise Architect : 2012 – 2013 (18 month contract)

• Principal Solution Architect for New Zealand's tax department.

• Responsible for delivering solution designs for all I.T. change projects such that they aligned with enterprise strategy.

• Member of the Enterprise Architecture Leadership Team.

• Matrix-managed up to 15 Enterprise Solution Architects.

• Co-chair of the Enterprise Architecture Council.

• Chair of fortnightly meetings with the Principal I.T. Consultants (operations team).

• De-facto Security Architect, and author of the Information Security Reference Architecture document.

• Implemented significant improvements to the Solution Architecture process.

Solnet Solutions Ltd. / Wellington, New Zealand
Senior Consultant : 2010 - 2012

• For NZ's Inland Revenue Department, before being promoted to the Principal Architect role described above, David designed the system for taxpayers to opt-in for email notifications by topic. This project delivered the strategic Party Management Application (including a domain model for Identity) plus a new Service-Oriented framework.

• For the Accident Compensation Corporation, David designed the eGateway, a web service for health-care providers to submit forms over a secure channel. David led the development team. Shortly after the delivery of this project, Solnet won an ACC tender to become its "eChannel and Integration Services" supplier.

Jade Software Corporation Ltd. / Christchurch, New Zealand
Delivery Manager New Zealand : 2008 - 2009

• David managed software development teams ala Prince2 for Jade customers such as Fonterra, Air New Zealand, the Warehouse, and the University of Canterbury. He was Scrum Master for the Enterprise Risk Assessor and Investigator products. He also consulted for Arc Innovations on the Advanced Metering Infrastructure program as an agile coach and Java instructor.

Software Federation, Inc. ( SFI ) / Colorado, USA
Co-Founder / Principal Partner and Consultant : 1996 - 2007

• Sales and contract negotiations, but mostly hands-on consulting for SFI clients.

SFI Client: Xilinx, Inc. / Colorado, USA
Principal Consultant : 2007

• Introduced VMware Enterprise technology to Xilinx's Computer Farm Services group.

Latis Networks, Inc. (Still Secure) / Colorado, USA
Director of Product Engineering : 2006

• Project manager and technical lead for the Cobia Unified Network Platform, designed to integrate open-source TCP/IP components (router, DNS, DHCP, Firewall, ...) with a great browser interface. David brainstormed requirements, recruited team members, designed the software, led the agile team, and coded core infrastructure.

SFI Client: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR / UCAR) / Colorado, USA
Principal Consultant : 1997 - 2003 (various roles)

• Recipient of NCAR / UCAR's 2001 Outstanding Accomplishment Award for Scientific and Technical Advancement - for the 4DWX project (Four Dimensional Weather Engineering), a comprehensive suite of state-of-the-art tools for meteorologists. As the Software Engineering lead, David led an agile effort to redesign the system to make it scalable and modular (this involved lots of pair programming in Java, a great way to mentor the team).

• Primary consultant for an enterprise-wide business-process re-engineering effort, creating analysis models that were used to identify operational inefficiencies.

• Invited lecturer on Commercial Middleware for a workshop on I.T. strategy.

University of Colorado (CU - Boulder)
Department of Computer Science, Faculty / Lecturer : 1999 - 2002
Division of Continuing Education : 1997 - 1998

• Course author for CSCI 4448: Object-Oriented Programming and Design. Topics include: Java, C++, UML, OO design patterns, multi-threaded concurrency, databases, architecture, and (agile) project management. Software Engineering in the wild.

• The lecture notes are online as PDF files: www.Leberknight.com/csci4448.html

• Here's an example JavaScript program with which you can create Fractal Art.

• David also taught Advanced C++ evening classes for adults.

Early Career / Colorado, USA
Consultant and Software Engineer : 1987 - 1997