Shafreen Anfar
Software Architect | Associate Director | Developer of Ballerina Language | Apache Committer and PMC Member | Seasoned Engineering Manager | Distributed Systems Enthusiast | Forever learner
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anfar.shafreen@gmail.com shafreen@apache.org 
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I am a distributed system specialist with over ten years of experience working in the computer software industry. I started my career working on a high-performance stock brokerage system before moving on to work on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for integration. Currently, I am working on developing a fully-fledged programming language specialized in writing distributed applications.
My skills go beyond just programming, as I am also proficient in customer handling and team management. Over the years, I have effectively led teams and delivered high-quality results. In fact, I had the opportunity to play the Engineering Management role for a team of over 70 engineers for two years, where I built a culture of quality and timely releases.
Apart from my passion for technology, I also have a love for travel. Exploring unfamiliar places and immersing myself in diverse cultures is something that fascinates me. I also enjoy capturing my travel moments through captivating photographs.
EDUCATION
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Bachelor of Science (First Class Hons.) in Information Technology Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka 2008 - 2011 |
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Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Curtin University, Australia 2008 - 2010 |
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES
WSO2 Inc. |
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WSO2 is an open source technology provider which gives enterprises the flexibility to deploy applications and services on-premises, on private or public clouds, or in hybrid environments. Hundreds of leading brands and thousands of global projects execute over 18 trillion transactions annually using WSO2 technologies.
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DirectFN LTD. |
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DirectFN is a privately held innovative technology company founded in 1998. DirectFN is a financial information technology solutions provider based in Kuwait. They offer a wide range of financial services to clients in the Middle East and North Africa region, including real-time financial data and news, trading platforms, and analytics tools.
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TECHNICAL SKILLS
| Domain Expertise | REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSub, SOA, MSA, OSI Model, API Management, Integration, Netty, DSL and General purpose language designing |
| Framework | Spring boot, MSF4J, WSO2 Carbon, OSGi, GraalVM |
| Security | SSL\TLS, mTLS, Basic Authentication, JWT, JWK, JWS, OAuth2, OIDC, LDAP |
| Message Formats | JSON, XML, SOAP, Protocol Buffers, EDI |
| Network Protocols | HTTP, HTTP/2, Websocket, SSE, FTP, SFTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, TCP/IP, UDP, ARP, DNS, DHCP |
| Programming | Java, Go, Ballerina, C#, Servlets, Python, SQL |
| Database | MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL |
| Message Brokers | NATS, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Azure Event Hub, Azure Service Bus |
| CI/CD & Test Automation | Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, Travis, Jenkins, Junit, TestNG, Mockito, Apache JMeter |
| DevOps | Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Docker, Kubernetes |
| Troubleshooting Tools | Wireshark, JFR, Memory Analyzer (MAT) |
RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
Research Publications
- M. A. M. Shafreen; A. Zuhair; U. P. M. De Silva; D. M. J. Edirisuriya; Prasanna S. Haddela; B. H. Kasthuriarachchy, “BribeWire: Assuring trustworthiness of bribery complaints” 2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, 2011, doi: 10.1109/ICIINFS.2011.6038057.
Specifications
- Ballerina HTTP Library (Dec 2021)
- Ballerina gRPC Library (Dec 2021)
- Ballerina GraphQL Library (Jan 2022)
- Ballerina FTP Library (Oct 2020)
- Ballerina Constraint Library (Aug 2022)
- Ballerina Email Library (Apr 2020)
- Ballerina Auth Library (Feb 2022)
- Ballerina JWT Library (Feb 2022)
- Ballerina OAuth2 Library (Feb 2022)
- Ballerina MIME Library (Jun 2022)
- Ballerina SerDes Library (Sep 2022)
- Ballerina TCP Library (Dec 2021)
- Ballerina UDP Library (Nov 2020)
- Ballerina WebSocket Library (Dec 2021)
- Ballerina WebSub Library (Jan 2022)
- Ballerina WebSubHub Library (Nov 2021)
Articles/Blogs
- The fallacies of integration and the way forward (Oct 2023)
- Spring Boot vs Ballerina: Back-end For Front-end (BFF) Service (Dec 2022)
- Few Rules for Teams with Diverse Individuals (Dec 2019)
- Spring Boot vs Ballerina: Hello-World Service (Aug 2021)
- Want to Be Part of an Amazing Journey ? (Oct 2019)
- Ballerina: Why a New Programming Language (Jun 2019)
- Feedback: What Underpins the Culture of Freedom and Responsibility (Feb 2019)
- Eat My Dust! : Making of Ballerina’s Lightning Fast HTTP Transport (May 2018)
- Snorkeling in Hikkaduwa — Sri Lanka (Jan 2019)
- Clone and Aggregate Integration Pattern with Ballerina (Dec 2018)
- Five Principles of Ethical Leadership (Mar 2017)
- A Guideline on Writing REST APIs (Jan 2022)
YouTube Videos
- [Introductory] Integration with Ballerina (May 2023)
- Getting started with Azure Functions in Ballerina (Oct 2023)
- Ballerina: Discover how Ballerina simplifies integration tasks on Azure (Sep 2023)
- Notes from the Book Talk Like Ted By Carmine Gallo (Aug 2023)
HONOURS & AWARDS
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 Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2020) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2020. |
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Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2019) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2019. |
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Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2018) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2018. |
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Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2017) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2017. |
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Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2016) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2016. |
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Outstanding Contribution Award (Dec 2014) Rewarded this in recognition of my outstanding contribution in 2014. |
PROJECTS
Ballerina | Cloud Native Programming Language
https://ballerina.io
https://github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-lang
Ballerina is a statically typed, compiled programming language designed for network distributed application development. Ballerina standard library which is often described as “batteries included”, provides a vast array of standard libraries which includes modules such as GraphQL, gRPC, REST, HTTP, OAuth2, JWT, WebSub, etc. I am playing the lead role of the standard library team.
Contribution as the Standard Library Lead Architect
- Provided direction and planned what features to be done in each release
- Provided technical guidance on designing and implementing new features
- Reviewed PRs and do code reviews to validate the implementation
- Made sure features are delivered within the promised timelines
- Helped team members understand how each feature fits into the bigger picture
- Kept senior leadership up to date on the team’s overall progress
Contribution as the Engineering Manager
- Identified bottlenecks in the process and roadblocks to success of my team and clear the roadblocks
- Partnered closely with the Product lead to manage project scope and ensure the technical deliverables are met
- Identified headcount needs for the team, plan and recruit to fill the needs
- Managed team members with different skill sets
- Solicited and Deliver individual feedback frequently
- Did the Performance Appraisal Review (PAR) for each team member
- Provided technical input for Standard Library design and implementation
- Designed and Implement CI/CD pipeline for Ballerina release
Contribution as the Lead Engineer for HTTP module
- Designed and implement high performant HTTP transport
- Designed and implement JAX-RS like REST dispatching model
- Designed HTTP module APIs for Ballerina
Technologies: Ballerina, Java, IAM, JWT, OAuth, Cryptography, Git, Gradle, TestNG, YAML, Apache JMeter, AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes
WSO2 ESB | The Fastest Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) in the World
WSO2 ESB is the fastest open source ESB in the world which is built on OSGi based framework known as WSO2 Carbon platform. WSO2 ESB provides vast range of features for administrators and developers such as message routing, mediation, transformation, logging, task scheduling, failover, load balancing, and many more. It supports almost all the transports starting from HTTP, HTTPS, POP, IMAP, SMTP, JMS, AMQP to TCP, UDP to custom transports like FIX. It facilitates JSON, XML, SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2, WS-*, EDI, HL7, OAGIS, Text, MP4 and all binary formats. ‘eBay’ uses WSO2 ESB to handle 1 billion transactions per day using WSO2 ESB. I played the role of software engineer for the ESB team.
Contribution as an Engineer
- Researched and Develop new features
- Troubleshot and diagnosed customer issues
- Mentored junior members in the team
- Helped marketing of the product
- Helped sales team with technical presentations
- Helped improve product documentation
Technologies: Spring, Java EE, Cryptography, Blockchain, Electron, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Travis CI, Git, Junit, AWS
Integration Consultant for Fidelity | USA
Fidelity Investments Inc. is one of the largest asset management companies in the world. Fidelity was developing an asset management system for their next generation digital platform. Assets were developed and published to the store so that others can use those in their projects. This project included vast array of products such as Splunk, WSO2 ESB, WSO2 IS, WSO2 Greg, Jenkins. I played the role of WSO2 integration consultant for Fidelity.
Contribution as a Consultant
- Helped sort out deployment issues
- Helped define assets
- Secured publisher/store access
- Designed and deploy new REST APIs
Integration Consultant for T-Systems | Germany
T-Systems is a German global IT services and consulting company. T-Systems was developing a new backend platform for their Connected Car project. Initial stage of this project was intended to gather data from vehicles, which were emitted via a special device connected to the car. This project included many different servers such as httpd, HAProxy, Squid proxy, WSO2 ESB, WSO2 AS, WSO2 ELB, SVN, and LDAP. I played the role of WSO2 integration consultant role for T-Systems.
Contribution as a Consultant
- Helped configure and deploy the cluster setup
- Resolved issues in the deployment
- Helped test the functionality of the APIs
Integration Consultant for Fidelity | USA
Fidelity Investments Inc. is one of the largest asset management companies in the world. Fidelity was developing a next generation Digital Platform for their customer portal. Backend of this new customer portal was built using WSO2 ESB. A bunch of REST APIs were developed and exposed via the ESB. ESB was connected to a network of legacy backend and services which were primarily developed as SOAP services. I played the role of WSO2 integration consultant for Fidelity.
Contribution as a Consultant
- Helped setup required environments
- Developed new REST APIs
- Improved performance to meet the Service Level Agreement (SLA)
- Provided governance to new APIs
Next Generation Trading Platform
DirectFN is a pioneer in FinTech. It provides ready made one-stop fully integrated trading solution with technology, content and brokerage services. The solution includes all the backend and frontend trading tools which allows a broker to offer 70+ Global markets to their customers. The legacy backend system of this solution was being replaced with a next generation platform. As a member of this team, I worked on rewriting the HTTP streaming server from scratch which streams real time market data to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) either using long polling or Websocket. I played the role of software engineer.
Contribution as an Enigineer
- Worked with chief architect to design the server
- Implemented HTTP Streaming server
- Worked with QA team on testing the server
- Worked with deployment team on deploying the server
- Troubleshot and fix issues in production
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTS
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In addition to aforementioned projects, I have taken part in many customer engagements around the globe. These customer engagements varies from Quick Start Programs (QSPs) in which a proof of concept is implemented withing a time period of one week, customer training programs related to WSO2 products, to troubleshooting urgent production issues on sight.
Countries: Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, UK, USA |
TIMELINE
| Date | Description |
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| Feb 2022 | Released Ballerina 2201.0.0 (Swan Lake) programming language (open-source project), which I contributed full-time as the stanadard library architect |
| Nov 2021 | Promoted to software architect at WSO2 Inc |
| Mar 2020 | Completed working at WSO2 Inc as an engineering manager |
| Oct 2019 | Promoted to senior technical lead at WSO2 Inc |
| Sep 2019 | Released Ballerina v1.0 programming language (open-source project), which I contributed full-time as the stanadard library lead and then as an engineering manager |
| Apr 2018 | Promoted to technical lead at WSO2 Inc |
| Jan 2018 | Started working at WSO2 Inc as an engineering manager |
| Mar 2017 | Promoted to associate technical lead at WSO2 Inc |
| Apr 2015 | Promoted to senior software engineer at WSO2 Inc |
| Feb 2013 | Started working at WSO2 Inc as a software engineer |
| Jan 2013 | Completed working at DirectFn as a software engineer |
| Mar 2012 | Started working at DirectFn as a software engineer |
| Dec 2011 | Completed the B.Sc. in Information Technology at Sri Lanka Institue of Information Technology with a first class honours |
| Aug 2011 | Published the research paper “BribeWire: Assuring trustworthiness of bribery complaints” in 2011 6th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems |
| Dec 2010 | Completed the B.Sc. in Information Technology at Curtin University |
| Jan 2008 | Started the B.Sc. in Information Technology at Curtin University |
| Jan 2008 | Started the B.Sc. in Information Technology at Sri Lanka Institue of Information Technology |
FAVOURITE BOOKS
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CRICKET ENTHUSIAST
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