Shervin Afshar

Résumé

Software Engineer 5 (Los Gatos, CA)

Netflix, Inc., Media Cloud Engineering, 2022 (Current)

Senior Software Engineer (Los Gatos, CA)

Netflix, Inc., Media Cloud Engineering, 2018 - 2022

Localization Engineer (Los Gatos, CA)

Netflix, Inc., Content Platform Engineering, 2015 - 2018

Development of tools and operational reports in Python and Java (on Play Framework) utilizing REST APIs from microservices across Content Platform Engineering to address the needs of internationalization and localization teams.
Mentoring teams for implementation of ICU {MessageFormat} to accommodate gender and plural cases in localized content.
Domain expert for Unicode and Bidirectional text inquiries within Content Platform Engineering teams.
Worked with tools development team to transfer localization domain knowledge and to communicate requirements for the newly developed localization tools.
Co-chair of W3C Arabic Layout Task Force and editor of the Arabic Script Layout Requirement document.
Partnered closely with localization project managers and language leads to provide technical support for Netflix localization tool-set.
Collaborated with product development teams to ensure localizability of their content.

Software Localization and Internationalization Engineer (San Jose, CA)

HighTech Passport, Ltd., 2011 – 2015

Conducted client training sessions on new technologies, tools, and best practices in internationalization. Latest example was consulting Sony Computer Entertainment International on internationalization needs of PS4™ and related online services.
Bidirectional localization engineering based on directives of Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm for products in Hebrew, Arabic, and Urdu for products of very high visibility (e.g. Yahoo, PayPal, and Dolby Laboratories).
Communication with Unicode Technical Committee as the representative
Internationalization research (calendars, collation, etc) and localizability assessment study for projects.
Automated sets of localization and internationalization tasks and tests using the data from CLDR/ICU.
Deployed common TMS/CAT software (Idiom WorldServer, Trados Studio, etc.).
Refactored the existing codebase of individual scripts (in Perl) into a unit-tested library used in customizing the internal localization engineering pipeline and web-based MVC tools.
Preparation of translation kits (markup, externalization, segmentation) and delivery in various formats depending on client requirements.

Creative Engineer (Linz, Austria)

Ars Electronica FutureLab, 2008 – 2011

Consulted the team on use and implementation of Arabic script and typography in media installations.
Developed a Python framebuffer library for Ars Electronica Center LED media facade suitable for rapid prototyping of project ideas.
Planned and performed the migration of Ars Electronica website from proprietary legacy code in ASP to Wordpress multi-site platform.
Web development on LAMP for Ars Electronica (http://www.aec.at) and custom plugin for Wordpress for calendar and event management (http://www.aec.at/center/en/calendar/).

Freelance Internationalization Engineer

HighTech Passport, Ltd., 2009 – 2011

Technical Translator and Documenter (Tehran, Iran)

Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc. 2007 – 2008

Technical writing, translation, and localization QA for packages included with Sharif Linux, a Linux distribution made, customized, and localized for Iranian users.
Developed technical and legal standards for The Encyclopaedia of Iranian Architectural History focusing on use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and copyleft licensing for the content.
Consulted Iranian national body, The Institute of Standards & Industrial Research of Iran (ISIRI), on Iran’s vote on ISO proposal DIS-29500 (Microsoft OOXML).

Assistant to CTO (Tehran, Iran)

Kyansoft Co., 2007

Communicated the client issues and requests to the development team and participated and presented the software to the potential clients in demo sessions.
Integrated the bug tracking system with customer-facing issue tracking platform.

QA/QC Staff (Tehran, Iran)

Kyansoft Co., 2006 – 2007

Implemented and maintained the bug tracking system to replace spreadsheets previously used. Ad-hoc reports from the system contributed to a substantial reduction in cost per defect.
Developed automated test suites for load and functional testing of the software using TestComplete native scripting and available SDK.

Sheikh Bahaee University (Esfahan, Iran)

B.Sc. in Computer Engineering (Software), 2006.
Linz University of Art and Industrial Design (Linz, Austria)

M.A. in Interface Culture, 2009 – 2011 [unfinished].

Programming
- Python: My programming language of choice for almost any task.
- Java: My new favorite. I use Java where Python falls short.
- Groovy: Feels like Python, performs like Java. What’s not to like?
- Sql: I have used SQL on various RDBMS environments (e.g. Oracle 10g, SQL Server, MySQL).
- Perl: Old time favorite. Unprecedented power for string processing. The language of code poets.
CI/CD/IaaS
- Gradle (and Nebula).
- Jenkins.
- Spinnaker.
- AWS.
- Docker.
- Git, Atlassian Jira and Stash.
Storage
- Elastic Stack.
- Apache Cassandra.
TMS/MT/CAT/L10n
- SDL Idiom WorldServer/Desktop Workbench;
- Trados Studio 2009/2011 and Multiterm;
- Okapi Framework;
- Proprietary and FOSS Statistical Machine Translation systems;
Operating Systems
- Linux
- Mac OS X
Other
- Documentation: Mediawiki, LaTeX, Confluence.
- CMS: Wordpress, Drupal.

Roland Haring, Hideaki Ogawa, Christopher Lindinger, Horst Hörtner, Shervin Afshar, and David Stolarsky. 2010. The city at hand: media installations as urban information systems. In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries (NordiCHI ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 667-670.
Shervin Afshar, Computer Internetworks Management; Tools, Methods and New Approaches, B.Sc. final thesis, under the supervision of professor Ahmad Baraani Dastjerdi, 2004 – 2006.

Member of Unicode Technical Committee (2012 – 2015), CLDR Technical Committee (2012 – 2015), and Unicode Emoji Sub-committee (2014 – 2015).
Afshar, Shervin, and Pournader, Roozbeh. Proposal to Encode Arabic Letter Teh with Small Teh Above for Bravanese (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14293r-bravanese-small-teh-above.pdf), 30 October 2014.
Afshar, Shervin, and Pournader, Roozbeh. Six New Symbols from Chinese Folk Religion (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14278r2-folk-symbols.pdf), 30 October 2014.
Afshar, Shervin, and Pournader, Roozbeh. Emoji and Symbol Additions - Religious Symbols and Structures (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14235r3-relig-sym.pdf), 28 October 2014.
Wikipedia: Administrator (2005 – 2007), and the first elected bureaucrat (2006 – 2007) on Persian Wikipedia.
Free Software: Contributed to Persian localization and technical manuals for FOSS applications such as Audacity, Songbird, VLC, and Gimp.

Stadt der Kulturen 2010 award (category “social and cultural integration of immigrants”) from City of Linz for the interactive installation project “The Evidence of Things Not Said” with David Brunnthaler and Henning Schulze.

Persian: Native language.
English: Full proficiency. Able to speak, write, read, and translate fluently. Scored 107/120 in TOEFL iBT, June 2012.
German: Intermediate proficiency. Passed 400 hours of language education in Deutsches Sprachinstitut Teheran, Goethe Institute in Tehran, 2007 – 2008. Scored 101 in TestAS (“Test für Ausländische Studierende”).
Arabic: Basic proficiency.

References would be available upon request.