Staff Software Engineer at EFI
Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area
Staff Software Engineer at EFI
Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area
• M.S. in Computer and Information Science
• 11 years of industry experience in digital imaging from Pixar-level computer animation to high-volume color printing
• 9 years experience in embedded systems, Windows and Linux kernel device drivers, other performance-critical systems-level programming
• Strong knowledge of OS concepts: process, thread, heap, stack, DMA, interrupts, timers, virtual memory, IPC, user vs. kernel space, race conditions and locking
• Designed and implemented software for several autonomous, maintenance-free network appliances with multi-year uptimes
• Identified and implemented technological innovations to improve efficiency of others
• Enjoy contributing to both the high level design and low level implementation of a project
• Enjoy applying critical thinking to produce robust products and high-quality code
• Skilled at technical writing, crafting marketing prose, and alleviating customer concerns
• Comfortable performing basic hardware tasks (soldering, assembly and rework; use of standard lab equipment such as scopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers and multimeters)
• Passion for technical challenges extends outside of work; have reverse-engineered and improved DVD players, projectors, and other electronic devices
• Entrepreneurial spirit has led to a successful side business supporting electronic player piano systems plus some consulting in this area
Embedded systems, reverse-engineering, OS/kernel-level code, Windows and Linux device drivers, chip and board bring-up, data format conversion, plug-ins, software glue, cryptography, real-time hardware-software control applications, 2D and 3D graphics, multi-platform SDK development, Windows installers, Windows Driver Framework (WDF, KMDF), Windows Driver Model (WDM), DHCP, HTTP, HTML, XML, SSL/TLS, TCP/IP, IrDA, SNMP, MIDI, UTF-8, I2C, USB, PCI, LCD controllers
(Public Company; EFII; Computer Software industry)
February 2000 — Present (9 years 10 months)
Developed robust, performance-critical Windows and Linux kernel drivers and control software enabling high-end digital color presses from Canon, Xerox, Ricoh and Kodak NexPress to be driven by EFI's flagship Fiery print servers.
Designed and implemented the embedded Linux-based firmware for EFI's PrintMe Station network appliance, a small ATM-like device providing secure printing services to guests at hotels, airports, and other hospitality areas (http://www.printme.com). Developed a comprehensive partner SDK for the PrintMe service supporting Linux, Windows, LynxOS, MacOS X and VxWorks.
(Consumer Electronics industry)
August 1995 — Present (14 years 4 months)
Run a successful side business selling self-designed custom hardware/software solutions for modernizing the Superscope/Marantz Pianocorder player piano system.
Reverse-engineered the proprietary CD formats for several modern player piano systems and maintain freeware encoding software supporting all of them. (http://dp70.dyndns.org/mid2pianocd/)
Provide ongoing technical services to Live Performance, Inc., a manufacturer of high-resolution reproducing player piano systems.
(Public Company; Motion Pictures and Film industry)
January 1998 — January 2000 (2 years 1 month)
Developed and executed in-house procedures for creating digital video masters of Pixar's animated films for broadcast and home video, pioneering the high-quality transfers that are commonplace today on Blu-Ray and DVD.
Created Renderman shaders and 3D paint setups for Toy Story 2 and also performed the video transfers of that film.
Managed Pixar's renderfarm and image disk arrays, rendered a substantial portion of Pixar's second feature film A Bug's Life; wrote a variety of Perl/Tcl/shell scripts to automate rendering processes and to manage and monitor resources.
(Educational Institution; 51-200 employees; Research industry)
November 1995 — December 1997 (2 years 2 months)
Developed software to drive haptic force feedback devices in virtual surgery and patient rehabilitation applications.
Implemented embedded software for a haptic joystick control system allowing a wheelchair user to navigate a virtual space assisted by active guidance and force feedback upon collisions.
Implemented real-time haptic control software under Linux to drive Immersion Corporation's prototype sinus surgery simulator in tandem with an SGI Onyx-based interactive volume renderer. Imagery and force feedback were derived from MRI data.
M.S. , Computer Science , 1995 — 1997
Specialized in hardware-software systems, computer graphics and animation.
Master's thesis: Designed a conversion system to archive digital player piano recordings from the Marantz Pianocorder system of the 1970s, including accurate conversion to the modern MIDI file format.
Produced a two-minute computer-animated short film, "Butterflies in the Rain", featuring procedural animation synchronized with music from a MIDI file, shown at SIGGRAPH 1997.
B.S. , Computer Science , 1991 — 1994
Specialized in software systems, with an emphasis on computer graphics. Graduated "Magna cum laude" and "With Distinction". Minored in Russian.
Undergraduate honors thesis: Designed and built a hardware/software system to optically scan and archive player piano rolls as Standard MIDI files.
Piano, organ, home theater, photography, electronics, mechanical music, movies, performing arts.