Sales Engineer

Location:

1740

Posted:

July 11, 2011

Contact this candidate

Resume:

Daniel Allen Deufel

Cell: 508-***-**** *** Berlin Road . Bolton, MA Home: 978-***-****

01740

*********@*******.***

Customer focused leader and individual contributor who combines in-depth

engineering and consulting experience to build world-class Sustaining

Engineering and Global Customer Support organizations. Dedicated to the

proposition that happy customers spend more money.

Looking for leadership opportunities in a sustaining engineering or

customer support organization.

Builds and leads teams to provide mission-critical business solutions in

dynamic, complex global environments.

. Corporate team leader on numerous worldwide problem accounts. Ascertained

customer business requirements and causes of their dissatisfaction.

Developed solutions and led short-term implementation efforts to

remediate issues of contention. Developed long-term strategies to ensure

good working vendor-customer relationships. Directed on-site and

territory teams in the delivery of solutions.

. Trusted by senior management to deal effectively with the most

disgruntled customers and turn them into delighted customers who were

willing to continue to buy products and services from us.

. Managed and owned problem escalations from the field. Worked critical

(Severity 1) escalations round the clock and through weekends to

resolution and restoration of customer production. Recruited resources

from other engineering groups to expedite resolution. Directed the

distributed team to resolve the problem and remediate the customer.

. Saved numerous multi-million dollar customer accounts ($70M in one 18

month period). Identified over $40 million in incremental sales during

the remediation process.

. Consulted with customers to develop customer run support and escalation

procedures, and organizations. Helped customers redesign and improve

their various support functions with the goals of 1) reducing costs, 2)

improving response metrics, 3) improving response accuracy, and 4)

improving employee skills and morale. Worked with other engineering

groups leaders to establish contact with customer senior management.

. Identified worldwide pre-sales and technical support training needs for

New Product Introductions and ongoing Product Support. Developed

curriculum and materials. Presented training seminars worldwide. Mentored

field consultants and lab engineers which improved field engineering

responsiveness to customer problems.

. Identified and recruited talented engineers for both my organization and

other sister engineering groups.

High level technical contributor and strong team leader who excels in

combining strategic vision and planning with tactical execution to

establish new corporate quality standards.

. Built and led teams from multiple engineering organizations that

identified and solved customer reported problems. Incorporated solutions

into manufacturing and repair processes.

. Performed failure analysis and drove findings back into Development

Engineering and Manufacturing to reduce costs and increase Reliability,

Availability, and Maintainability.

. Worked with development engineering groups to improve product

Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability.

. Debugged and resolved hardware, operating systems, storage, and

environmental problems.

. Thrives working on multiple projects. Non-linear thinker who has found

that critical thinking on one project can give fresh and varied insight

into other project's problems.

Identifies customer needs and architects enterprise class system solutions

enabling the sales organization to drive revenue and profit gains.

. Superb customer facing skills and abilities. Comfortable with all levels

of internal and customer staff including IT and Engineering Staff, Senior

Management, and Corporate Level Executives. Able to bring all staff

levels together to solve tough business IT problems.

. Maintained relationships with numerous senior customer executives and

technical support staff.

. Designed High Availability Production Systems to help customers meet

their business objectives, projected growth, and Service Level

Agreements.

. Led numerous annual Strategic Planning Sessions with Fortune 500

Enterprise IT customers. Drove $100+ million in incremental purchases

across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.

Skilled in driving transformation and improvement in customer's business

systems enterprise-wide. Thrives in fast-paced, high-pressure,

multicultural environments. Cultivates solid business relationships. Builds

high-performance loyal teams focused on commitment to mission and

excellence. Adept at managing multiple tasks and projects simultaneously.

Frequent speaker at local technical users conferences and worldwide

customer symposia. Employed by senior management as the technical point-man

with customers in both pre-sales opportunities and customer satisfaction

situations. Comfortable with both face-to-face and telephone engagements.

Accomplishments, and contributions to Customer Satisfaction consistently

rewarded by senior management. Efforts and results recognized with the

'Digital Corporate Customer First' Award.

Career Milestones

Isilon Systems (Division of EMC) - 2010 - 2011

2010-2011: Contract Consulting Engineer

. Contracted to help build a new Sustaining Engineering Group.

. Identified issues that needed to be addressed in order to improve in

order to improve the organization's ability to grow.

. Immersed self into the product design center to identify problems and

solutions.

. Worked to resolve customer reported problems.

Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard - 1978 - 2008

1994-2008: Sr. Consulting Hardware/Systems Engineer, AlphaServer

Sustaining Engineering

. Responsible for AlphaServer and VAX platform design centers. Provided

24x365 worldwide Level 3 Field Systems Support and Level 4 Hardware and

Systems Sustaining Engineering

. Traveled frequently world-wide to deal with customer satisfaction issues

and technical problems. Directed field teams in problem solving,

troubleshooting, and customer remediation projects.

. Performed crash dump (OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix) and error log analysis to

determine whether a problem was hardware or software related. Worked with

operating systems engineering to identify, and fix operating system bugs.

. Designed, built, instrumented, and scripted testbeds, PCI Buses, network

infrastructure, and large I/O Subsystems (SAN, SCSI, WAN, FC, etc.) to

reproduce and analyze and fix reported problems.

. Participated in manufacturing ramp up of a new mid-range system.

Identified and resolved manufacturing startup problems. Provided support

to field test sites and early production ships.

1984-1994: Principal Corporate Technical Consultant, High Performance

Systems Marketing

. Provided corporate level pre-sales, post-sales, and customer satisfaction

related consulting worldwide. Post-sales consulting often was in response

to customer dissatisfaction to a solution that they had been sold.

. Consulted on New Product Introductions and provided technical support to

field test sites for both hardware and software products.

. Managed Product Group planning and participation in numerous trade shows

and events.

. Designed I/O Subsystems for high end enterprise customers. Assessed

application subsystem performance and availability requirements.

Configured economical and expandable subsystems.

. Frequent speaker at technical and marketing events. Comfortable in the

classroom, auditorium, or boardroom.

. Consulting lead on a number of ongoing Customer Strategic (5 Year)

Planning Projects with Fortune 500 companies. Customers loved my

involvement because I could see their business needs in ways that they

could not. They trusted me to recommend purchases because they knew that

I would not recommend things that they did not need. Sales teams loved my

work because I was trusted by the customer, identified customer needs

that led to incremental sales, and allowed Sales to accurately forecast

customer purchases for the next 8 quarters.

1978-1984: Principal OS and Network Engineer, Software Sustaining/Support

Engineering

. Provided Level 3 and Level 4 engineering support for TOPS10 and TOPS20

Networking and Communications kernel code and Front-end Communications

Processors Code.

. Sent to customer sites worldwide to deal with critical problems, outages

and customer satisfaction issues.

Other Experience

Past President of the Board of a non-profit technical services organization

whose charter was to provide technical support and guidance for other non-

profit and charitable organizations that did not have the resources to

build their own IT infrastructures.

Served on the Boards of a number of non-profit organizations.

Food Services Director and Head Chef at a medium size camp for boys.

Responsible for the menu (nutrition, ordering, and budget), the food prep

staff (5-6 assistant cooks), and a services team (team leader and 5-7

members). We served three meals a day family style for 200+ people. Also

managed special dietetic needs of campers and staff with food allergies.

Directed a number of local youth programs.

Daniel Allen Deufel

Cell: 508-***-**** 238 Berlin Road . Bolton, MA Home: 978-***-****

01740

*********@*******.***

Customer focused leader and individual contributor who combines in-depth

engineering and consulting experience to build world-class Sustaining

Engineering and Global Customer Support organizations. Dedicated to the

proposition that happy customers spend more money. Looking for leadership

opportunities in an engineering or customer support organization.

Abilities, accomplishments, and contributions to Customer Satisfaction

consistently recognized by senior management. Efforts and results

recognized with the 'Digital Corporate Customer First' Award.

Professional Experience

Isilon Systems (Division of EMC) 2010 - 2011

Contract Consulting Engineer 2010-2011

. Brought in on contract to help build a new Sustaining Engineering

Group.

. Identified issues that needed to be addressed in order to improve in

order to improve the organization's ability to grow.

. Immersed self into the product design center to identify problems and

solutions.

. Worked to resolve customer reported problems.

Hewlett-Packard (DEC, Compaq), Global Computing Industry Leader 1978 -

2008

Senior Consulting Hardware/Systems Engineer, AlphaServer Engineering, 1994

- 2008

. Responsible for AlphaServer and VAX platform design centers. Provided

24x365 worldwide Level 3 Field Systems Support and Level 4 Hardware and

Systems Sustaining Engineering

. Managed and debugged numerous platform design escalations and customer

satisfaction issues concurrently. Led numerous teams of engineers and

consultants in customer remediation projects. These cases occurred when

the customer became dissatisfied with his IT infrastructure for which we

were responsible. These situations were serious enough that our

relationship as a major vendor was jeopardized. Built and executed

customer account 'Get Well' plans and contributed technically to the

plan. Worked to exceed SLA metrics.

. Managed and worked multiple projects and problems simultaneously.

. Traveled frequently world-wide to deal with customer satisfaction issues

and technical problems.

. Directed field teams in problem solving, troubleshooting, and customer

remediation projects.

. Management's preferred engineer to deal with obscure, ill-defined

problems in complex, multi-vendor environments. Frequently dispatched to

customer sites around the world with little notice.

. Mentored junior engineers and field personnel.

. Performed Root Cause Analysis on parts and assemblies returned from the

field. Identified and corrected design, manufacturing, and packaging

issues

. Documented and published solutions and work-arounds to reported technical

problems.

. Performed crash dump (OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix) and error log analysis to

determine whether a problem was hardware or software related. Worked with

operating systems engineering to identify, and fix operating system bugs.

. Debugged High Availability, Distributed, Clustered systems with

distributed storage systems.

. Examined, reproduced, and developed solutions for customer reported

system and I/O performance problems.

. Performed validation testing of fixes and work-arounds to insure that

they fixed the problem and didn't break anything else in the design

center.

. Designed, built, instrumented, and scripted testbeds, PCI Buses, network

infrastructure, and large I/O Subsystems (SAN, SCSI, WAN, FC, etc.) to

reproduce and analyze reported problems. Designed work-arounds and

solutions to the problems. Worked with Storage Engineering to identify

and resolve storage based issues.

. Incorporated fixes to the design center into ECOs and, when appropriate,

FCOs

. Worked with Development Engineering (AlphaServer Engineering, OpenVMS

Engineering, Tru64 Unix Engineering, and Storage Engineering) to

incorporate fixes and enhancements into new products.

. Participated in manufacturing ramp up of a new mid-range system.

Identified and resolved manufacturing startup problems. Provided support

to field test sites and early production ships.

. Designed, wrote, and taught a two day course on the architecture and

troubleshooting of an enterprise class platform. Wrote course student

manual and designed lab exercises.

. At the request of Field Service management, developed training plans for

field engineers. Developed and presented technical seminars for field

engineers. Provided platform training to Korean Field Service Engineers

who replace personnel lost to promotion, transfer, and attrition.

. Cultivated an ongoing working relationship with 30-40 field engineer and

support staff around the world. I gave them my mobile phone number and

instructed them to feel free to call me anytime day or night should one

of our customers encounter a critical problem that affected the

customer's ability to produce. This typically reduced the time needed to

get engineering involved from 6 to 8 hours to 5 minutes.

Principal Technical Systems Consultant, DEC High Performance Systems -

1984 - 1994

. Provided corporate level pre-sales, post-sales, and customer satisfaction

related consulting worldwide. Post-sales consulting often was in response

to customer dissatisfaction to a solution that they had been sold.

. Consulted on New Product Introductions and provided technical support to

field test sites for both hardware and software products.

. Developed and presented New Product Introduction seminars. Taught

numerous Train-the-Trainer seminars to regional and country teams around

the world.

. Designed I/O Subsystems for high end enterprise customers. Assessed

application subsystem performance and availability requirements.

Configured economical and expandable subsystems.

. Frequently asked for by sales to be a technical sounding board at lunches

or dinners during corporate customer visits. Listened to and advised

customers on technical questions, Best Practices, and other IT issues.

. Customer advocate and interface to engineering. Drove product

reliability, availability, and maintainability.

. Analyzed customer workloads to isolate, identify, and remove performance

bottlenecks.

. Provided IT consulting to customers. Recommended improvements to

customer's production systems to improve reliability and availability.

Guided customer staff and field resources in the implementation of

recommended changes.

. Corporate Liaison to the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society for six

years.

. Managed Product Group planning and participation in numerous trade shows

and events.

. Frequent speaker at technical and marketing events. Comfortable in the

classroom, auditorium, or boardroom.

. Consulting lead on a number of ongoing Customer Strategic (5 Year)

Planning Projects with Fortune 500 companies. Customers loved my

involvement because I could see their business needs in ways that they

could not. They trusted me to recommend purchases because they knew that

I would not recommend things that they did not need. Sales teams loved my

work because I was trusted by the customer, identified customer needs

that led to incremental sales, and allowed Sales to accurately forecast

customer purchases for the next 8 quarters.

Principal Software Maintenance Engineer, Large Computer Group - 1978 -

1984

. Provided Level 3 and Level 4 engineering support for TOPS10 and TOPS20

Networking and Communications kernel code and Front-end Communications

Processors Code.

. Sent to customer sites worldwide to deal with critical problems, outages

and customer satisfaction issues.

. Lead sustaining engineer on multiple product introductions. Developed

training materials and taught seminars to engineering and field support

engineers.

. Provided telephone support to field engineers.

. Mentored junior sustaining engineers and field support engineers.

Technical Proficiencies

Operating Systems: OpenVMS, Tru64 Unix, Linux (various distributions),

FreeBSD, MacOSX, RSX-11, Custom Network Front-end code

Skills: Hardware and Operating System Troubleshooting, Capacity

Planning and Performance Analysis, Error Logs, Packet

Capture, and Messages files analysis

Hardware Platforms: AlphaServer Family, VAX Family, PDP-11 Family, PDP-8

Family, x86 platforms, Macintosh Platforms (68000, PowerPC,

and Intel)

Tools: Lab equipment (Oscilloscopes, Logic Analyzers, etc.), Test

Chambers, Custom Built Testbeds