Vidiom Systems Corporation, Broomfield, Colorado

Initially hired as a hands on engineering manager for a small software engineering services company specializing in interactive television technology, as well as more traditional services relating to embedded driver and kernel development, I lead, manage and mentor a staff of between five and ten principal software engineers. Technical contributions range from providing software architectural oversight and low-level driver and kernel development to company-wide technical methodology, process and standards development. Other responsibilities include assisting sales in making technical customer presentations and developing Statements of Work, technical program management and contributing to senior management tactical and strategic planning whenever possible.

Later, I chose to pursue a purely technical role as a senior architect (one of two reporting to the CTO as director-level positions). In this position, I contributed to internal and external development efforts ranging from standards development, new technology evaluation and autonomous machine vision technology for use in automated tested equipment (actually licensed from my CoolCS company, using technology I helped develop for use with the shuttle program at Cape Kennedy). Other projects involved chairing the company's standards development committee and performing a linux port for a customer which produces cable and satellite set top boxes that support a record-to-harddisk (DVR) feature and a “trick-mode� for skipping commercials. This porting project first involved developing and ratifying both project and architectural plans. Then the actual software engineering to migrate a (customer-enhanced) big-endian kernel, device driver set, runtime and utilities to a new platform, employing a new chipset from Broadcom was required. In several cases, entirely new drivers are being designed and developed to benefit from new hardware-based MPEG processing components (i.e transport stream management, video encoder / decoder support, audio encoder/decoder support, etc). I'm also co-authoring a new out-of-band (OOB) driver supporting DigiCable/DigiCipher networks (Motorola Streaming Protocol et al) for Network Signon, Video on Demand (VOD), Impulse Pay Per View (IPPV) and Digital Video Record (DVR) applications.

For the year prior to my departure, I contributed to a next generation of conditional access system for cable being developed by PolyCipher. This cryptographic system supports conditional access, digital rights management and authorized service domains in DOCSIS/CMTS and traditional QAM broadband cable network topology. My contributions included 7816 drivers to the secure micro, the IP stack interface for UDP and TCP sockets, and data layer data unit validation for inbound packet processing within the DCAS manager.

A Cool Computer Science Company, Santa Cruz, California

Driving force behind a small (one million in annual sales) technology development company specializing in low-level embedded software systems and network infrastructure. A partial client list includes IBM Networking Hardware Division in Raleigh, North Carolina, two divisions of Silicon Graphics Incorporated, Hewlett Packard, Embedded Software Organization and Dramatis of Santa Cruz (now known as ContentX).

As a contract General Manager/Technical Director, I was responsible for the creation of a technical research and development effort to characterize and deploy a modern graphical user interface for use in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Simulation Based Design (SBD) Program. In conjunction with Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space Company (as a prime contractor), Dramatis created a Java-based, cross-platform interface to a collection of SBD middleware referred to as the Core Processing System (or CPS). Together these components create tools for performing high-level technical and economic trade studies for use in space systems, and defense.

Incidental responsibilities included pre-award contract negotiations, contract administration, enterprise infrastructure development (network plan and security policies, firewall design and deployment, engineering tooling standards and equipment procurement), and operations management.

As a contract Software Architect at SGI, I was responsible for the development of real-time drivers and software in support of a cross-media authoring and simulation system hosted on IRIX and Microsoft Windows platforms. Technical contributions to other CoolCS customers include the development of high performance, operating system non-specific video and graphics device drivers (for maximum reusability) for IBM, the design and build out of 3 enterprise data centers (DMZ-style networks with firewalls and connecting VPN infrastructure) for RRM, Dramatis and CoolCS. For HP, I led and technically contributed to defining development and network testing methodologies in support of embedded linux devices hosting Chai VM. This included contribution to the test plan specification, development, and deployment using x86 test controllors running linux and the extended test environment toolkit.

Management responsibilities include day-to-day technical operations as a small technology development company. Depending on size and complexity of the project, I may be involved in all facets (including hands-on technical contribution), or just as a techncial director.

HP - Embedded & Personal Systems - Emerging Businesses, Embedded Software Organization, Palo Alto, CA

Staff Software Architect, Embedded Java/Linux Coalition: I am jointly responsible for driving and resolving all business and technical issues associated with it. This includes researching and creating software component/feature matrices presenting component choices (JVM, Object System, host synchronization mechanism, and development tools) available for a given target platform. Devices ranging from Java enabled phones, PDA/smart handhelds and set-top boxes are in the scope of the first architecture. My focus has been primarily directed toward researching solutions to features that don't migrate from the linux desktop paradigm or are otherwise inappropriate in the handheld instrument paradigm. These include improvements in footprint reduction, hard realtime performance, memory management without virtual backing store, threading and scheduling policies specific to dedicated applications and overall system integration hosting linux OS with Chai/Java.

The entire division has been dissolved subsequent to the merger with Compaq.

Veridicom, Inc., Santa Clara, California

As Lucent's first technology spinoff company, Veridicom developed solid-state, fingerprint sensing technology and the corresponding systems infrastructure to help secure (authenticate) e-commerce with biometrics. My department supplied the technology to create Veridicom's intelligent and trusted biometric sensor product lines. Our first development was a standalone, turnkey, embedded fingerprint sensing system utilizing limited Public Key Infrastructure containing a 64-bit MIPS RISC processor from NEC, 8MB SDRAM, 1MB Flash, 300x300 fingerprint sensor in a package about the size of a business card.

As a hands-on technical manager, I was responsible for the initial board bring-up and overall system development of this technology from cradle to coffin. Additional responsibilities included initial department staffing, budgeting, personnel development, and team building, the usual stuff expected of management. Because our department was staffed with senior professionals with overlapping skills, we operated like a small think-tank; frequently helping other departments achieve things that would not have been possible otherwise.

I left Veridicom in April of 2000 to pursue professional development of A Cool CS Company as a full time endeavor again (working from lab at home, primarily because my wife Elizabeth was hit and injured by an uninsured motorist while she was running in Santa Cruz on the first day of spring 2000).

Consumer Products and Technology - MIPS Group, Silicon Graphics Incorporated, Mt. View, California

Designer of the real-time software drivers for the Magic Carpet Processor (MCP), a new set-top box multimedia processor and follow-on technology to the Silicon Graphics Reality Co-processor found in the Nintendo 64. The primary design considerations for this embedded VxWorks-based product were absolute maximum performance and throughput. Co-developer of software standards and conventions in use by the MCP software team.

Flatpanel Technology Group - NeoMagic Corporation, Santa Clara, California

Initial software engineer responsible for design and implementation of software libraries encapsulating the hardware feature set of the company's first product; a flatpanel SVGA controller with integrated DAC, frequency synthesizer and 1 megabyte embedded DRAM framebuffer. Initial uses of these libraries serve as the core to a hardware diagnostic and performance validation suite.

Multimedia Group (formerly Special Projects Group) - S3 Incorporated, Santa Clara, California

Principle system software designer and acting engineering project manager for Vision/VA Video Accelerator, a 64bit video processor/scaler. Responsible for defining, developing and delivering the initial architecture which led to the premier demonstration of Vision/VA at fall COMDEX '94 in Las Vegas. Three months of focused systems software development resulted in: 1) An initial definition of a unified multimedia API capable of supporting ALL of S3's present and forthcoming multimedia products; 2) An implementation of the unified interface using a Client/Server model with a procedure based high-level API which validates parameters, then dispatches low-level messages to operating system independent mini-drivers; 3) Implementation of a Demonstration/Validation program as well as register level debugger, displaying all 97 hardware registers in near real-time under windows. First silicon returned from the fab two weeks prior to COMDEX. Other S3 project contributions included: Methodology specification for performance analysis of the Vision family of Graphic Accelerators (964 and 864); Configuration and installation of S3's live internet feed; Development of a modular, Integrated Cross Development System which allows for an exceedingly high degree of reusable software among protected mode DOS, Windows, Windows-NT, Chicago and OS/2 device drivers. All DOS and Windows Vision/VA software was developed on an OS/2 workstation using Microsoft C v. 7.0 and Masm 6.2 for 16bit drivers and Metaware High C/C++ 3.10 and Masm 6.2 for 32bit drivers.

Advanced Development Group - Weitek Corporation, Sunnyvale, California

Principle system software designer and software project leader for VideoPower, Weitek's video co-processor. The VideoPower is equipped with 2-D digital filters, a color space converter (YUV to RGB) and a stretch blitter capable of arbitrary scaling. The VideoPower is primarily focused at accelerating backend image processing of multimedia CODEXes like MPEG-II, CINEPAK, Captain Crunch, Indeo and motion JPEG under Video for Windows. Chief designer of Weitek's software development tool kit (abbreviated WTK) which serves as the core of Weitek's software driver platform for protected mode DOS, Windows, Windows-NT, and OS/2. The WTK supports the Power P9000 and P9100 graphic accelerators as well as VideoPower. The WTK is based on a modular software architecture which provides for clean separation of device dependent, and device independent code sections without compromise of performance (Weitek's calling card). Also responsible for the design, implementation and testing of the multi-platform, multi-OS driver development environment in use by the software department at the time of my departure.

Networking Systems Group - ICOT Corporation, San Jose, California

Member of the design team for a Microsoft Windows-based IBM 3270 terminal emulator product. Designed and implemented the Data Services portion of the product and served as a technical advisor in resolving design, coding and integration issues throughout the development effort. Created the OmniPATH Programming Interface (an API) used by EHLLAPI and other high level applications, enabling third party and OEM-type customers to interact with and modify the product functionality. Co-designer of revision control, integration and staging procedures to ensure efficient, reliable program compilation. Managed the overall build environment utilized by a team of over 30 developers and test engineers.

Information Systems - Harvey's Resort Hotel and Casino, Stateline Nevada

Provided leading-edge technical direction and insight to operations management and executive staff in the strategic use of real-time computerized casino tracking and monitoring systems. Projects included: redesign and reimplementation of casino-wide token-ring LAN; Production implemention of Harvey's Surprise Slot Winners System; and a design for a real-time graphic revenue display, showing casino hot spots of the 2,300 slot machines; and implementation of company wide coding standards.

Delphic Systems Corp. formerly Pacific Systems Inc., Tualatin, Oregon

Provided varied consulting services to clients drawing from a diverse background of application engineering and operating system engineering experience. Projects included providing ongoing expert Unix kernel debugging assistance (Tektronix), development of high-level user interfaces based on object oriented programming techniques utilizing C++ and Vermont Views (Sequent Computer Systems), the design, coordination of installation and build-out, and automated system administration of numerous ethernet LANs across the U.S. (Sequent Computer Systems), and an expert system design using C++ and FUSION to capture expert knowledge for use in automated legal aid (Snyder Bankruptcy Legal Services).

Television Products Division - Engineering, Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, OR

Participated in a team which integrated and enhanced the Distributed V Operating System from Stanford University. We implemented the message passing kernel on a new series of waveform digitizers for real-time signal processing in television (Tektronix VM700). Software responsibilities included: Porting V-system components to the Tek AI workstation 4404; writing of custom device drivers and UTek servers to allow communication between operating systems.