Sr firmware developer for embedded, Linux-based, energy-management controllers targeted for medium-sized businesses. The controllers gather data from HVAC, power, gas, etc. and interact with a cloud portal for analysis, control, alerts, and customer interface. Accomplishments to date include: re-architect the boot, OS, and file systems to be "brick proof"; reduced product boot time from over 2-min to 24-secs; improved product WIFI connectivity (driver and apps) for reliability and added WPA-Enterprise support with 802.1x and EAP/PEAP, designed and implemented both server and embedded side GSM/GPRS connectivity for cellular m2m pipeline.Chief architect of new M2M cellular gateway product, devising efficient backhaul protocol for data transmissions, and template-driven mapping of end-device data to sets of standardized "services"; hvac, lighting, schedule/event, sensors, etc. This allows rapid integration of our cloud services to read and control our own and third-party devices. Currently integrating with Trane, Lennox, Johnson Controls, Carrier, Leviton, equipment such as RTU's, VAV's, Boilers, and lighting controllers.

Member of the “media pump” team on the Cisco Telepresence endpoint products, which are enterprise-class, IP video conference systems. Our team is responsible for all aspects of media delivery, quality control/reporting, media resiliency, timing, and stream synchronization between Telepresence conference rooms. Conferences can involve up to 5 video and 7 audio simultaneous streams per endpoint. Accomplishments include reduction by more than 75% in the CPU cost to stream media. Also lead the redesign of the jitter buffer architecture for better media compatibility with 3rd party endpoints and Cisco Telepresence Server. This included creation of a development framework that simulates code on the target platform, but runs on the build-server and provides various unit test and input-output response graphing capabilities.

I worked in a team responsible for the infrastructure (Linux OS, drivers, and lower-layer apps) for Linksys 1 VoIP phones and gateways. I contributed in troubleshooting perceived OS issues such as performance, thread spins/lockups, memory leaks, and developed several tools that aided other teams in debugging Linux apps on the target platforms. I also had responsibility for developing low layer functions for a new ISDN BRI gateway that included Linux OS code and config modifications, BRI chipset drivers, and a Q.931 interface to the SIP Call Control Layer.

As a team lead, I organized a team and provided architectural direction to develop the firmware infrastructure for Cisco’s next generation of VoIP phones called TNP (The Next Phone). This included developing the CNU (Cisco Near Unix) operating system; a light-weight, real-time, multi-user virtual-memory Unix OS. Of the OS, I personally developed the real-time scheduler, process mgmt., interrupt handling, and TCP/IP network stack, including VPN support. This was bundled with a number of drivers and lower-layer applications into the TNP infrastructure architecture, which supported a variety of processors for the Cisco 79XX IP phone platforms.

Selsius was acquired by Cisco Enterprise Voice BU, where I worked in a team developing VoIP gateways. Among my responsibilities was to develop an octal T1/E1 gateway blade for the Catalyst 6K switch, where I provided the firmware that interfaced between the line chipsets, the IOS switch manager, and the SCCP Call Manager. I also worked on the migration to allow gateways to support MGCP as well as SCCP.

Designed and developed several Windows MFC programs to test various streaming approaches of RTP over Ethernet. I developed a set of BaseIO self-registering COM class objects used to implement RTP audio streaming, rendering, and compression/timing conversion for the Selsius Virtual VoIP Phone. I also developed firmware for the Selsius Analog Access VoIP gateway, including a Q.931 stack and call-control state machines that converted FXS/FXO line protocols into signaling in the Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP).

I pursued “matching grant” government IR&D programs in partnership with area Universities to leverage corporate and DoD IR&D budgets. I managed and was the faculty technical liaison on a directed research grant to Southern Methodist Univ. for fuzzy logic antennae controllers applied to “on the move” satcom uplink terminals. I also directed a small team in the use of Hatley-Pirbai system simulation tools (StateMate), for the purpose of modeling and exploring the use of much cheaper Ethernet (rather than ATM) for multimedia traffic in mobile tactical battlefield scenarios.

Technical lead on the design of secure telecom product baseline that featured unlimited voice conferencing capacity, “hot swap” redundancy of system cards and power supplies, and direct interface and control of military COMSEC encryption devices. Managed proposal generation, contract negotiation and execution on many USAF, US Navy and NASA programs to engineer, design, manufacture and install custom-tailored secure communications systems derived from this product baseline.

Hardware designer for a DoD contracting company. Became proficient in many switching technologies for voice, video, and data circuit switching, including multilevel circuit switching for large (~20,000 port) switching systems. Designed interface cards for many telecom 4W, 2W, digital circuits, microprocessor controllers, etc. Designed ESI’s first combined secure/non-secure voice terminal that met “zero emanations” military TEMPEST requirements.