Gareth Howlett Email & Phone Number

Burbank, California, Us

El Segundo, California, Us

Concurrently held roles as Associate Director and Section Manager for Performance & Analysis representing the department both internally and externally.Directed and oversaw departmental work, including planning, assignment, allocation, budgeting, goal setting, performance management, and staff development.Refactored a legacy C/C++ application to use a custom AWS Lambda runtime for >1000x improvement and scale including S3, SNS, Glue, Athena, and QuickSight. Demonstrated trailblazing activity for the department.Department work included PNT, TWTTR, Encoding/Decoding, Filtering, Analysis, M&S, Lab Testing, Systems Engineering, etc.

Irvine, California, Us

Steered the company towards a more lucrative network design and paved the way for a mass migration of terminals, consolidating roughly 2600 aircraft and saving the company millions, annually.Inspired multiple teams to adopt new technologies using AWS, Agile, and product ownership.Obtained an unprecedented goal of having all aircraft connected to a satellite 98% of the time.Turned customer requirements into measurable KPIs, reducing contractual penalties, boosting QoE and profitability.Vertically managed company-wide internal/external communications and executive messaging from SMEs.

Irvine, California, Us

Led the largest corporate connectivity transformation in history. Replacing the iDirect satellite network platform with Newtec. This was an industry disruptor resulting in higher throughputs, new customer satisfaction and business awards.Charged with all stages of system development, from requirements definition and vendor selection to delivery, implementation, and monitoring.Planned and executed core software upgrades of the global Newtec modem platform (~100 beams, 24 satellites, 16 teleports, ~60 airlines and >1500 aircraft) while maintaining less than 1% drop in connectivity.Simultaneously managed 3 teams with 3-8 people and extreme technical diversity (satellite, antenna & system software).

Irvine, California, Us

Led a team of six senior engineers with extensive expertise spanning various technologies, including software, satellite, networks, antennas, testing, and systems.Helped oversee the growth and development of the Panasonic mobile aero network from ~300 to over 800 aircraft.Organized the team to operate in a modified agile structure and architected the adoption of key engineering practices.Oversaw the strategic partnership with a key single-source vendor while developing requirements for the next generation of satellite connectivity.Acted as the key liaison between a core team of remote (Israel) antenna engineers and the satellite network team.

Christchurch, Dorset, Gb

Managed a team of 5-10 SWEs (C/HTML/JavaScript/Perl) of all types and skill levels covering all aspects – candidate selection, tasking, scheduling, resource development, team coordination, budgeting, hiring, firing, etc.Directed entire team of SWEs through a complete rewrite of the company’s stabilized VSAT solution using a TI ARM9 AM1808 SMX RTOS architecture on custom PCBs. This project was the reference design and premiere implementation of a $40M contract between Sea Tel, Inmarsat and iDirect for the new Global Xpress KA VSAT network.Oversaw analysis, design, development, testing, implementation and delivery of many simultaneous product releases while providing routine status updates to C-level executives. This included redundant solutions, beam switching, protocols and integration with many satellite modems and management solutions – iDirect, ComTech EF Data, ViaSat, STM, NewTec, Uplogix, Inmarsat, etc.Developed, administered, documented, trained, audited, monitored and enforced a new company-wide approach to Configuration Management including a regimented Bugzilla/Subversion/CodeCollaborator/Hudson strategy where traceability is key and a 1-line change must take <10 minutes.Traveled to international customer locations as an ambassador of new company products. Demonstrated new technology and features while obtaining direct customer feedback on new designs and taking feature requests.

Christchurch, Dorset, Gb

Accountable for the oversight and delegation of responsibilities among all software developers. This was organized through championing adoption of a hybrid SCRUM/Waterfall method.Served as the go-to person for software consulting from the genesis of project proposals to the delivery new products and features. This resulted in being the integration prime for external and internal customers on all company offerings (GP32, 9S08, RCM3720, AM1808) and projects as well as travel to customer and partner locations.Delivered on a wildly successful custom touch screen interface project by providing code, structure, design and examples to junior developers. This product (9S08, SLCD) line quickly transformed customer expectations and set the industry standards for control interfaces on TVRO systems.Recruited senior and junior developers for roles within the software engineering group.Evolved company ISO processes and tools to expand from a single developer site to a multi developer environment.

Christchurch, Dorset, Gb

Engineered every aspect of an embedded custom Linux touch screen device for control of an array of stabilized antenna systems. This included but was not limited to project planning, design, specification, programming, troubleshooting, debugging, analysis and rework.Wrote the first implementation of the OpenAMIP protocol for remote antenna control on a Digi/Rabbit Semiconductor embedded Ethernet device.Organized collaboration of interdepartmental personnel for Life Cycle Management, product scope definition and product improvement purposes.Redefined engineering department procedures focusing on core software development tools, directly resulting in a more efficient and productive team.Nominated for the Sir Alan Cobham Award 2009 in the Technical Innovation category.

Fremont, California, Us

Narrowed specifications for, defined, documented and ordered two different generations of computer hardware for shipping and deployment of all Pivotal products.Designed, documented and maintained key systems and procedures for production of all Linux products using expert knowledge of kickstart and shell scripts.Acted as a liaison between the Engineering and Field Operations Support groups while managing tasks and schedules according to deliverables, due dates, projections and business plans.Recovered critical systems from mechanical/electrical failure. Implemented backup and recovery methods in an administrative capacity on all internal Linux servers.Provided full tier hardware/software technical support and guidance to all coworkers via phone, email and remote computing sessions.

Guelph, Ontario, Ca

Implemented internal requests to augment the default functionality of Bugzilla and other tools including an ASP website and a JSP/MS Access part management system.Designed and wrote a source code distribution program surrounding the company’s uClinux usage and Linux driver development. Added product support to the Linux 2.6 kernel by augmenting the standard serial driver with new UART initializations and device identification.Provided bilingual customer support via phone, email and fax.Redesigned company-wide RMA and customer call reports to adhere to ISO documentation standards.Performed quality assurance and driver/application testing in accordance with ISO standards.

Wrote and helped design a corporate emergency response system using existing support code and structure.Troubleshot clients’ problems and support issues while directly interacting with clients and handling their concerns.Helped identify and address ‘growing pain’ concerns from within the company and its infrastructure.

Aarhus C, Dk

Developed point of sales software in a .NET environment using Visual Basic.NET.Worked in a team environment to develop key products in the company’s flagship configuration suite solution.Helped design Pathfinder’s presentation for SuperComm 2003 by creating promotional content including logos and animated business card CDs.

Worked in a team environment to support a multiplatform research and development group.Setup and deployed an Ignite-UX server for automated network-based redeployment, addressing various styles of HP-UX machines.Upgraded, installed, repaired and administered all onsite HP-UX machines.Installed highly specialized and custom pieces of software while troubleshooting many common UNIX/HP-UX problems.

Ottawa, Ontario, Ca

Developed a large-scale servlet/database interface to perform regular and irregular maintenance on production database systems.Helped troubleshoot problems with various Java and web-related projects on Linux systems.Contracted to finish development of the servlet/database interface.