Name, Address, Phone: WITHHELD
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Director of Software Engineering
who creates motivated high performing engineering teams by identifying the goals, selecting the talent, communicating the vision, and raising work quality and productivity through better processes, training and experienced technical mentorship.
Areas of Expertise
Rapid New Product Development – 37 safety-critical devices in 10 years.
Embedded Software Development, Real-Time Systems, Operating Systems
Industries
Medical, Aerospace, Automotive, Transit, Gas Control, Library Systems.
Medical Device Design and Manufacturing Company - MN Sep 1997 – Present
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Private $32 million company specializing in medical device development and manufacturing.
Director of Software Development - 2000
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Leader of the Software Engineering Group and member of the Strategic Planning Committee that transformed this company from a 15 person $1.5M company to a 130 person $32M company in 10 years, increasing revenues by roughly 50% year after year.
With a software engineering staff that started at 3 and now numbers 17, the group, under my direction and technical leadership, has created over 37 new medical devices in 10 years for 25 different customers. Our high productivity software organization now creates 6 completely new medical devices a year while sustaining or enhancing another 6 medical devices a year. The new devices are for vastly different applications, from small battery-powered muscle stimulators to large distributed architecture heart/lung machines, have no predecessors, and all of the devices are efficiently tested to FDA and ISO standards. Great teams, good process, good environment and great management have yielded great fast-to-market product. Our software expertise and experience is now the #2 selling point communicated to potential customers.
Extremely effective selecting, developing, mentoring and retaining good software engineers at all skill levels. The results noted above and a low turnover rate demonstrate this. Candidates and recruiters we occasionally do business with consistently remark that our software interview process is the best they have ever seen. I am establishing strategic partnerships with universities of interest to get a leg up on the competition for the small population of embedded software engineering students that we need to continually grow the business. One developmental and motivational strategy I use to good effect is to accurately define incremental development roles, and most importantly the interesting work and other rewards that associate with those roles, and what an engineer needs to demonstrate to get there. An excellent software and electronics background, as evidenced by other documentation you will find in this resume, allows me to relate well to the staff and challenge them to work at their current best and to see the excitement of the new things they will be able to do when they have reached the next step in their development. The institution of recognition awards and leading-edge technology investigation projects increased group morale and the technology investigation projects positioned the company to be the perceived technology leader in our medical device design industry.
Consistently the first to innovate and implement process improvements and policies that better the entire company. Management peers and upper management look to the software group for processes and policies that work. Software director and team are recognized as the best, most prepared group in the company. Process improvements and policies that started out in the group and were subsequently rolled out company-wide include:
1. Out of a need to create new reports crucial to the management of the software group faster, worked with the IT department to create a more flexible report generation mechanism, one that allows users to create their own ad-hoc reports without waiting weeks for IT to develop them.
2. Championed the search for and implementation of a method to reduce the 100s of software licenses that the company was paying to have on the desktops of infrequent users.
3. An easy to administer incentive/reward system that encourages extra effort and has a 20:1 payback ratio
4. Several others on: employee orientation, proficiency testing, performance appraisal workups, a training equipment pool, and the introduction of a CAPA (Corrective and Preventative Action) brainstorming process (in-progress).
Inspired by the CEO to read a book on the Critical Chain approach to manufacturing bottlenecks, went on to find another book by the same author that applied similar methodology to project management and convinced the Vice President of New Product Development to execute a pilot project. The pilot project, aided by my knowledge of the methodology, was very successful in that the multidisciplinary project team was always aware of the effect their individual efforts had on the schedule and that led to the best success the company has ever had with on-time delivery and the preservation of project margins.
Created a comprehensive five year vision for software. The plan identified greater software reuse as the single most important factor to our continued success in increasing profit margins in the project-driven engineering wing of the company. Increased software reuse from 10 to 50 percent over 5 years by introducing object-oriented (OO) design, first in the C language because of the limitations of the prevailing embedded electronics at the time, and now the C++ language. Trained the team in OO design and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Guided an internal team in the specification of policies on the use of C++ in safety-critical embedded medical devices. Guided lunch-hour brown bag C++ training sessions. Selected and rolled out version control tools better suited to managing the higher amount (70+%) of source code sharing that is targeted for the near future. Worked with IT to enhance its proprietary issue tracking tool to track issues across projects in addition to its role of tracking issues within projects. Used tempered passion and well-reasoned arguments throughout to advocate for change – with those I report to and with those I direct.
Software quality has risen substantially during my tenure as director. Software defects found by the verification teams have dropped to 10 per project and, it may be hard to believe considering the high number of new devices we have in the field, but the total number of software problems reported by our customers is less than 3 per year. We achieve both speed and quality by first understanding the safety vision promoted by the FDA and then tailoring the development process accordingly and holding the developers personally responsible - not by a wasteful, mechanistic application of a set of rules. Company quality systems auditor.
Raises have consistently been above the company average for the last 8 years in a row, even during the 2 year slowdown in the industry that followed the 9/11 disaster.
The challenges of my current position have been interesting and a source of great personal growth but I am seeking greater challenges, hopefully the software or engineering directorship of a larger organization or a vice presidency in a startup or medium-sized organization, a position where I can have greater impact affecting the financial health and vivacity of the organization.
Prior to being promoted to director I was an experienced software architect who created significant applications for medical, aerospace, automotive and even gas utility industries. See below.
Principal Software Systems Architect/Leader - 1997
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Principal software architect/leader for a large, multi-year Heart/Lung medical device project. The distributed architecture Heart/Lung device was responsible for the delivery and monitoring of blood to the patient in cardio-bypass operations (distributed communications patent received). Graphical user interface and proprietary embedded operating system (OS) design and development. Proprietary embedded OS has gone on to be used in over 20 medical devices. Also architected a light source device for cancerous tumor treatment, a computerized system used for the diagnosis of prostate cancer, a centrifugal pumping and flow and pressure monitoring system used to pump blood between peripheral arteries of a failing heart, and a computer system that collects and displays information from an implanted left ventricular assist blood pump.
Consulting Corporation - MN Sep 1992 – Sep 1997
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Private contract software and electronic engineering services company.
Software Consultant
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3M Company – Maplewood MN - Aug 94 to Aug 97
Invented (3 patents received) embedded, object oriented software for a library product that allowed patrons to checkout library materials themselves. Developed embedded, object oriented software for a GPS-based vehicle tracking system for the transit industry. Designed and implemented the software for a graphically configured, PC-based, Automatic Vehicle Detector Test System for reliability and production line use.
Northern States Power Company – St. Paul MN - Dec 93 to Aug 94
Integrated Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) into a DEC-based SCADA system for the Gas Control industry. Coordinated the selection, ordering, coding, installation, testing, troubleshooting and documentation of the related hardware and software products. Developed the associated embedded RTU software. Coded Fortran programs for DEC computers to retrieve data from the RTUs on a daily basis. Received bonus for the successful on time completion of the high visibility project.
Owatonna Tool Company – Owatonna MN - Sep 92 to Nov 93
Designed a graphical PC-based Production Test System for Chrysler DRBIII automotive analyzers. Integrated programmable IEEE-488 instruments into a system that provided stimulus to and obtained data from the Unit Under Test (UUT). Defined the software protocol that was used to interface to the embedded test routines that were also being developed for the UUT. Coded embedded test routines.
Aero Systems Engineering - St. Paul MN Nov 1979 – Sep 1992
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Private full-service engine test company that provides test facilities, test equipment and software for commercial turbofan, turbojet, turboprop, military after-burning and marine engines.
Senior Software Engineer/Team Leader - 1988
Software Engineer – 1986
Applications Programmer – 1981
Engineering Technician – 1979
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Designed new, real-time, multi-tasking, data acquisition software products and enhanced a proprietary compiler for jet engine test. Developed IEEE Software Requirement and Design specifications. Directed three internal software engineers. Coordinated internal and remote engineers on a 300,000 line operating system conversion project. Assisted Marketing department with customer demonstrations and project quotations.
Created jet engine test applications for multi-million dollar commercial and military engines. Traveled domestically and internationally to install them. One significant accomplishment was the successful (worked the very first time) completion of an application for Fiat Aviazione (Italy) that fully automated the startup, normal running and shutdown of their GE CF6-80 engine – a pioneering event in the industry. Created a similarly automated application for testing cruise missiles for Bet Shemesh Engines (Israel). Also created applications for: US Armed Forces (after-burning jet, helicopter, marine and cruise missile), Pratt-Whitney, General Electric, Northwest Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada.
Responsible for hardware and software system management operations on three different computer systems (Digital Equipment, Data General and Hewlett-Packard). Provided training and support to internal and external customers. External training provided to American Airlines, GE Ontario, Turbomeca (France) and Fiat Aviazione.
Designed and repaired proprietary electronic temperature, speed and flow measurement products.
Software Skills/Proficiencies
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Embedded OS: QNX, TI BIOS, pSOS, RTXC, OSE and several personally designed proprietary OS
Operating Systems (development for): Data General AOS/VS, RDOS, RTOS; Digital Equipment VMS; Hewlett-Packard RTE-A; Apple MacOS; Microsoft Windows, MS-DOS; Unix.
Languages: C, Java, C++, Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, Assembly, Fortran, Pascal, Basic
Cross-Development Systems: Eclipse; Borland C/C++; Watcom C; Intermetrics; Microtec Research; GreenHills and Keil for Motorola 680xx, Intel x86 and Siemens C167 targets.
Graphical Development Tools: Eclipse Visual Editor, Symantec VisualCafe, Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, QNX Photon and National Instruments LabWindows.
Standards: IEEE-488, ARINC-429, Mil-1553, Bristol Babcosk BSAP, Trimble GPS, UML
Patents
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6783328 – Method and apparatus for controlling fluid pumps (distributed communications system)
6750777, 6542070, 6369709 – Terminal for libraries and the like
Education
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Quantitative Methods and Computer Science Certificate, University of St. Thomas, MN, 1994
Computer Science, University of Minnesota, 1979-1990
Computer Science, Inver Hills and Anoka-Ramsey Community Colleges, MN, 1978-1983
Research and Development Electronics, Anoka AVTI, MN, 1978
Avionics, Alexandria AVTI, MN, 1977 (First Class Radiotelephone License received) |
