Stephen Leaf

Stephen Leaf

Software Engineer

stephenaleaf@gmail.com · GitHub

Summary

Software engineer of 7 years professionally, started programming in my early teens. Studied with an emphasis on security but ended up specializing in keeping legacy VB6 components alive and bolting modern systems onto them: payments, embedded Chromium, SMS, mobile, all via COM interop. Gained professional experience reverse-engineering black-box components. Many years (10+) developing with the WIN32 API; 7 years professionally + 6~ years hobbyist.

Known Languages: C/C++, C#, VB6, Python, Java (ART/Native). PHP, Nim, Rust, Zig, Perl, SQL (several variants), ASM

Education

Sacramento State University

B.S., Computer Science and Engineering
– Sacramento, CA

Experience

Winworks Software LLC (acquired by Fullsteam Inc.)

Software Engineer II
– Placerville, CA
  • Maintained and extended our flagship VB6 product (350k+ LOC, used by thousands of shops over its lifetime) via COM-visible .NET assemblies.
  • Shipped a credit-card payments integration against a proprietary in-house payment service in 3 months.
  • Built a parts-ordering integration in C# using WebView2, embedded in the VB6 host over COM, allowing the legacy app to drive a modern Chromium-based vendor portal.
  • Built an SMS notification service with Twilio, wired into the main product for customer-facing messaging.
  • Maintained and updated companion Android and iOS apps that extend the main product.
  • Reverse-engineered internals of the VB6 runtime to adapt around breaking Win32 API changes in newer Windows releases. Fixing crashes and performance regressions in the main product.

Tech stack: VB6, C/C++, C#, PHP, HTML/JS/CSS, Java (ART), Objective-C, Python

Winworks Software Inc.

Software Developer I
– Placerville, CA
  • Helped maintain all mainline products and started developing integrations. Built an AST parser to translate Access SQL to T-SQL but had to switch gears when it was about 70% complete due to shifting priorities.
  • Maintained internal infrastructure: knowledge base, customer cloud platform, server migrations, monitoring, and metrics.
  • Recovered broken-but-critical features in tightly coupled legacy code through reverse engineering when source was lost.

Tech stack: Visual Basic 6, C#, C/C++, PHP, HTML/JS/CSS, Java (ART), Objective-C, Python, Microsoft Access

Projects

  • PetrinOS — Co-developed a DOS-like multitasking OS for college: task switching, filesystem primitives, utilities.
  • Game engine & games — Co-developed a custom engine and a 3D Pac-Man; currently developing a turn-based strategy game for future release.

Competitions & Extras

  • ICPC Regional — 2018 — Competed at UC Berkeley (Group B); finished in the top five.
  • ICPC Locals — 2017 — Top-five finish at the university level.
  • Tutoring/Teaching — Assisted labs in x86 assembly and tutored Systems Architecture & Design.

Skills

Proficient (10+ yrs) C/C++, C#, Python, Java, Bash, SQL, Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Arch), IDA Pro
Competent (3–5 yrs) Visual Basic 6, PHP, x86 Assembly, HTML/JS/CSS, Microsoft Access, Git, Ghidra, Binary Ninja, radare2
Familiar (1–3 yrs) AWS, Perl, Nim, Zig, Rust

References

References available upon request.