Lee Penkman

Aug 2023

Clipchamp Microsoft

Technologies: PyTorch, Huggingface, React, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning.

Projects:

• AI Video Creation
• AI Editing Video

Aug 2021 – Jul 2022

Compose.ai is an AI writing assistant,
I worked as the first Machine Learning engineer improving the product and processes significantly.

Technologies: PyTorch, Huggingface, React, Natural Language Processing, WandB, AWS, Spacy.

Projects:

• AI Autocomplete
• AI Writing Assistant - rewording, rephrasing text
• Spell checking
• Text dataset curation, bias reduction
• Virtual assistants, chatbots

May 2019 – Aug 2021

Canva is a leading graphic design product,
I worked delivering image processing and machine learning capabilities to the photo editing experience, previously as a Security engineer.

Technologies: Terraform, PyTorch, AWS, Docker, Python, GLSL/OpenGL.

Projects:

• Image background removal using Machine Learning
• Dataset collection and curation pipelines for training ML algorithms
• Object detection
• Phishing detection
• Infrastructure security, CI/CD systems
• Penetration testing
• Incident response/on call

May 2018 – May 2019

Fairfax is a leading media/news company,
I worked as a tech lead in a cross functional team on full stack web development, testing and data engineering/warehousing/science projects.

Technologies: Terraform, Django, AWS, Docker, Node.js, React, Google AdManager/TagManager/Optimize/Cloud.

Projects:

• Rolling out paywalls to high traffic news sites
• Scaling/developing high traffic news sites
• Building end to end analytics pipelines and reports
• Video/Ad Optimization

September 2015 – May 2018

Weta Digital is a world leading, award winning, premier visual effects company.
I worked on supporting Animation, Motion Editing, Crowd Simulation, Mocap and virtual artists by:
Gathering requirements, prioritizing features, developing/operating/reliability engineering on scheduling, stats gathering, machine learning/big data analytics and content creation/curation software.

Technologies: Python, Node.js, React, Ansible, Docker, ELK, Graphana, Redis, RabbitMQ, Postgres, MySQL, Maya, Nuke.

Projects:

• Data engineering, syncing, queueing and reliability engineering of data warehousing projects
• Production tracking/Product management tools, Data analytics, batch/realtime data warehousing and report generation
• Improving artists workflow
• Image processing pipelines, warping cameras, rendering workflows
• Versioning, tracking, publishing, diffing of; 3D artwork, video/cameras, meshes, textures/shaders, skeletal/puppet motion and timeseries data
• distributed 3D data pipelines, format conversion, performance optimization

August 2014 – September 2015 (1 year 2 months)

NZRS manages the DNS and .nz namespace in New Zealand.
As a subsidiary of internetNZ, NZRS works towards making the internet better for everyone.

Technologies: AWS, Python, Puppet, Ruby/Rails, D3, Hive, HBase, Hadoop, Scala/Spark, Postgres, Elastic search, Docker, Elastic Beanstalk.

Projects:

• Registrar stats dashboard
• BroadbandMap.nz
• Internet topology visualization in D3
• Mentoring student projects in Hive, HBase, Hadoop

December 2013 – July 2014 (8 months)

Infoxchange is a not for profit working closely with the Australian Government to make sure Technology is Easy to use and Accessible.
At Infoxchange i worked remotely in an agile environment, telecommuting into stand-ups, retros and planning poker meetings and communicating pro actively via chat.
I introduced behaviour/test driven development with Jasmine, code quality improved and bugs became under control.

Technologies: Python, Puppet, Django, Docker, Bash, Less, Backbone, Bootstrap, PostgreSQL.

Projects:

• Human Services Network for NSW Government
• Service Seeker (Similar to Google Maps)

April 2013 – December 2013 (9 months)

99designs is the world’s largest crowd sourced graphic design website.
At 99designs i became extensively experienced in responsive and mobile first design, distributed and cloud computing, Amazon web services, Agile development methodologies and performance optimization.

Technologies: PHP, Go, JavaScript/jQuery, AWS, MySQL and MongoDB.

Projects:

• Design annotations (commenting on part of an image).
• Campaign monitor to Mailchimp migration with no downtime with SQS
• Migrating data to a new SSO service

November 2012 to April 2013 (6 Months)

Kiwiplan provides intelligent solutions for the manufacturing industry.
I was on the special projects team covering fixing bugs, increasing developer productivity, test automation and Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence.

Technologies: Pentaho BI, Java, ExtJs, MySQL, MSSQL, Jenkins, ETL workflows.

Projects:

• Developing Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence solutions.
• Migrating distributed/service oriented systems to use Spring Remoting and service discovery.

March 2012 to November 2012 (9 Months)

I helped teach Java, Python and general computing to Students at the University. The work was fun and interesting as there was a large set of skills coming into computer science and many bright students.

November 2011 to February 2012 (3 Months)

As an intern at Kiwiplan I was mentored through the whole software development lifecycle, from gathering functional requirements to designing mockups, modeling client server interactions and database schemas to development, test automation and quality assurance. Afterwards I gave a presentation about work I had completed and my great experience.

Technologies: Java, ExtJs, MySQL, Maven, SVN, Tomcat, Hibernate, Spring, Balsamiq, Jenkins.

Projects:

• Continuous Automated Scheduling Environment (rule based system).

January 2010 – July 2010 (6 Months)

I was a Web Developer Apprentice at a small startup which mostly imported goods and developed E-Commerce websites to sell them.

Learned: LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP), HTML/JS/CSS, AdWords/Analytics/AdSense, SEO/SEM, Marketing.

Projects:

• Designing and building E-commerce websites from scratch and marketing them.
• Developed a flight time calculator.

AI Art Generatior and Editor - Generates HD Art

Technologies: PyTorch, CLIP, Huggingface, AI/Machine Learning, Google Cloud, LoRa.

Social AI Network with AI Chatbots and stories Illustrated and voiced by AI

Technologies: PyTorch, Huggingface, AI/Machine Learning, Google Cloud, Azure, AI Agents.

Secure Code and Multilingual Text Generator - Powered by Large Neural Networks

Technologies: PyTorch, Huggingface, AI/Machine Learning, Google Cloud.

Accurate, actionable predictions explained with evidence

Technologies: Python, Postgres, AI/Machine Learning, Google cloud, Material design.

Technologies: Node, Hexo.

Technologies: Node, Hexo, now Ghost.

Technologies: App engine, Reveal.js, Python.

Find perfect rings from Pascoes, Micheal Hill, Swarovski, Pandora and more.

Technologies: Node, Express, Polymer, AWS, Elastic Beanstalk, Postgres.

reWord Game - So Sentences Seem Sensible!

Technologies: Python, Google App Engine, JavaScript.

Big Multiplayer Chess - Massive Chess Game!

Technologies: Python, Google App Engine, JavaScript.

Edit the web and share the results!

Technologies: Python, Google App Engine, JavaScript, Originally Node, Express, Heroku.

Create Viral Marketing Campaigns! Promote Your Product With The Power Of The People!

Technologies: Python, Backbone, Facebook API, Google App Engine.

Multiplication Master is a fun way of learning maths.

Technologies: Python, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Google App Engine.

Addicting Word Games! Play Addicting Word Games Now!

Technologies: Python, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Google App Engine.

Joy Drop - Kids Creative App

Technologies: JavaScript, Google App Engine.

Addicting & Fun Word Puzzle

Technologies: Python, Bootstrap, JavaScript, Google App Engine.

New Zealand Price comparison website

Technologies: ASP.NET, C#, MVC 3, Originally Java & Google App Engine

I understand the challenges and trade offs faced when conquering big data, from data modeling in Relational vs NoSQL databases, implementing parallel ETL logic flows, Distributed processing Hadoop/MapReduce/HDFS, Data warehousing strategies like columnar databases, Star Schemas and OLAP Cubes to Data processing design patterns, I love these challenges that come with enabling smart decisions.

I love manipulating and visualizing data, augmented intelligence and aiding understanding by presenting data in intuitive ways with latest graphical and code first technologies like plotly, D3, SVG, Graphana, Tablau, Google data studio, Leaflet/spatial data analysis.

I love AI/human interaction, Knowledge transfer/distillation/compilation, PyTorch/Tensorflow, Differential data augmentation and 3D rendering, Fairness and balanced AI, Model and prediction interpretability, unsupervised techniques (GANs, student/teacher networks, clustering), User/data centric AI and building healthy data/product feedback loops.

I love hacking the web, pushing the limits with the worlds largest knowledge graph, web mash-ups, reusable service oriented architectures and open source.

I love playing and making games, 3D modeling tools (Maya, Blender), game engines (Unreal Engine, Unity3D)

I love pixels, Composition and video editing (Nuke, After effects), procedural art/simulation with Houdini, capturing/describing the natural world (video, motion capture, photogrammetry), graphics processing algorithms.

I love the arms race of cryptography, pen testing, hacks, network protocols, OWASP, privilege escalation, intrusion prevention/detection/response/postmortem, vulnerability scanning, low level programming and reading CVE's

I love developing trading strategies, secure distributed computing and consensus algorithms, smart contracts, time series forecasting/market prediction and online distributed machine learning systems.

I love not doing things too, Continuous integration and delivery, DevOps teams, Configuration management, Automatic development environments, Infrastructure as code, Docker.

I love having living documentation, having confidence to make change, knowing what things should do and what they actually do, testing often, Jasmine for in browser tests, Driving browsers for integration tests, Unit testing and dependency injection, Test driven DevOps, Big Data, Design and Development

I love making simple and easy to use apps, designing mobile and user first, making sure effort is best spent on critical features, prototyping user interfaces, card sorting, information architecture and Photoshop.