Bill Laarakkers Email & Phone Number

Reporting to the Executive Vice-President of Research and Development, duties include managing the following groups within R&D: Technical Support, Quality Assurance, Project Management and Localization, our Junior Product Manager (Maple).• Responsible for the establishment and upkeep of schedules and key milestone dates for our 4 major product lines to ensure timely release and delivery.• Oversee all major and minor details involved with rolling out new products or releases to bring about a successful product launch.• Interview and hire new team members to secure the best talent available for the salary offered.• Complete performance reviews for all direct reports to give meaningful feedback and to determine compensation increases.• Coordinate with group managers & developers to make sure major outstanding issues are addressed in a timely manner.• Supervise the localization of our products into 7 different languages.• Continue with Technical Support & Quality Assurance management duties.

Reporting to the Product Director, duties included managing our Technical Support team and Quality Assurance group.• Manage the day-to-day activities of the QA group to ensure proper test coverage and timely completion of tests.• Work with the Team Lead to schedule and approve QA calendar in order to maximize testing with limited testing resources.• Supervise our beta program and interact with our beta testers to ensure their reports are complete, their questions are answered and that their participation is rewarded.• Responsible for evaluating and selecting tool to use for automated testing of our GUIs.• Provide QA team with information about new product features so that proper test cases can be created.• Provide technical assistance and advice to QA analysts so they can remain productive.• Continue with Technical Support management duties.

Reporting to the Product Director, duties included managing our Technical Support team.• Manage the day-to-day activities of the Technical Support group ensuring customer satisfaction while maintaining high service levels.• Handle customer escalations and strategic customers directly to ensure problem resolution, increasing the likelihood of service renewal with customers. • Introduce product development suggestions ensuring that common customer issues and requests are incorporated into future product releases.• Maintain self-service knowledge base, helping customers to resolve issues without the need to contact Technical Support.• Continue with Technical Support team lead duties.

Reporting to the Senior Project Manager, duties included leading our Technical Support team.• Coach Technical Support Analysts and train new hires to ensure they are able to provide issue resolution accurately and in a timely manner.• Work with R&D managers to investigate and resolve uncommon support cases.• Continue with many of the day-to-day Technical Support Analyst duties.

Reporting to the Team Lead of Customer Service, duties included answering technical support inquires by telephone and by email.• Provide assistance to customers allowing for successful software installation and activation.• Offer mathematical and application help to assist customers with tackling their problem using our software.

Master Of Science (M.Sc.), Physics

•Thesis titled "Late Time Behaviour of Scalar Radiation in Schwarzschild-Einstein-de Sitter Spacetime"

Bachelor Of Science (B.Sc.), Theoretical Physics And Computer Science