JOANNE HELHOWSKI

*** **** ****

Harvard, MA *****

Home 978-***-****

Cell 978-***-**** abnkcc@r.postjobfree.com

SUMMARY:

Engineering leader specializing in the communications field, experienced in start-up, growing, and mature companies. Areas

of accomplishment include:

• •

Direct and matrix management of large teams with Embedded systems experience with FPGA,

budget > $50M and revenue of $50M. ASIC, DSP and multi core CPU technologies.

• •

Experience with managing globally distributed Joint development activities and contract

teams and offshore engineering activities. negotiations with outside partners.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

CIENA, Acton, MA 2007 – 2009

Senior Director, Products and Technologies

As Project Director, managing the development of a new generation of CN54xx products that offers a converged L0/L1/L2

platform. The product provides support of switching or retransmission of traffic across optical interfaces that are framed

using standard implementations of Ethernet (GbE, 10GbE), SONET/SDH (OC-n, STM-n) and OTN/G.709 (OTU-n).

Specific responsibilities include project management and direction to the hardware, software and manufacturing resources

that span five global sites. Fiscal responsibilities and quarterly budget tracking for a matrix managed engineering team of

150+ includes an annual operating expense budget of $55M along with an aggressive prototype build plan of $10M over 12

months in North America and Asia. Program progression is managed through a formal PLC “gate review” process. Key

deliverables include a custom developed ASIC and full new system hardware (chassis, PDUs, fans, line modules, switching

modules, control modules) and software conversion from VxWorks to Linux.

Targeted customers for the CN 54xx product line are the existing Tier 1 customers of AT&T and Verizon who are

experiencing growing demands on their optical infrastructure to support new Ethernet based services, legacy SONET/SDH

services, have a growing demand for broadband infrastructure and have a need to address the emergence of IP/Ethernet

based business services that are replacing traditional ATM/FR based services.

CANTATA TECHNOLOGY (Brooktrout and Excel Switching), Salem, NH 2005 – 2007

Senior Director, IP Media

Managed the SnowShore IP Media Server product line to enable services for the next generation IP Multimedia Subsystem

(IMS) network architecture.

Responsibilities included the engineering management of the development of voice and video services for a software based

media server running on industry standard hardware with Red Hat Linux. The engineering team of 20+ engineers covered

development, product validation and technical documentation. The product provided speech services (ASR, TTS) through

MRCP 1.0 in addition to IVR and conferencing services via MSCML or VXML 2.1. The product supported H.263 and

H.264 video and offered audio transcoding of AMR, G.726 and G.729ab codecs with a PCI-X DSP based hardware

accelerator card.

Active customer base included tier 1 carriers, OEMs and application partners who offered and deployed voice mail, video

mail, video sharing and conferencing services. Direct interface with executive customer management and joint collaboration

with Product Marketing and Sales to develop product roadmap and quick turn enhancements to facilitate new sales.

Responsible for corporate wide engineering offshore selection and staffing strategy. Selection accomplished through the

development and evaluation of 2 separate RFPs to evaluate both a BOT and ODC approach in India and China. The

evaluation and recommendation included the assessment of 8 RFP responses and on-site visits to 5 companies.

JOANNE HELHOWSKI

Page Two

NMS COMMUNICATIONS CORP. (Natural Microsystems), Framingham, MA 1998 – 2005

Senior Director, Platform Solutions (2004 - 2005)

Managed the development of video products as a member of the Open Access product family targeted to the wire-line and

wireless markets. Developed product roadmap in joint collaboration with Product Marketing.

Responsibilities included the development of the video tool kit product along with management and delivery of profitable

NRE video projects for Asian, European, and US based customers. The video products offer MPEG-4 <-> H.263

transcoding, media services and 3G-324M gateway services to enable NMS customers to build products offering video mail,

video streaming and video conversational gateway services. The team is distributed across 5 worldwide engineering offices.

Senior Director, Advanced Platform Group (2002 - 2003)

Managed a corporate funded development team whose mission is to provide the necessary guidance and deliverables for the

next generation (18 – 24 months) of products by the Business Units (BUs).

Responsibilities included the definition of a highly reliable media server subsystem using state of the art technologies in

distributed computing, network processors and AdvancedTCA. Key deliverables included an AdvancedTCA prototype blade

and Scalable Enhanced Services Architecture for media servers.

Senior Director, Enterprise Solutions Business Unit (2000 - 2001)

Managed $50M product line and $6.3M budget for a team of 25 covering both product marketing and engineering.

Product team’s responsibilities include hardware and software development, QA and product launch through a formal NPI

process. The product team was distributed between US and Europe. New products developed and launched were:

• BRI telephony card with support of IVR, Fax, VoIP, and Conferencing for the European and Asian markets.

• Enhanced voice conferencing software that offered support for coaching, increased port density and new hardware.

• Higher density cPCI analog product and lower density PCI digital product with full IVR, VoIP, Fax, and

Conferencing capabilities.

• New OS (Windows 2000, Sparc 64) support and related features (hot swap, plug and play) for Enterprise products.

Director, Engineering Operations and Network Protocols (1998 - 2000)

Managed a $4.2M budget for a team of 30 covering the development, worldwide homologation, and support of digital and

analog products.

Network protocol development covered PRI ISDN, CAS, Loop Start, Subscriber loop, and DID interfaces. Engineering

Operations function provided support for product development teams at multiple geographic locations. Areas covered were:

• BRI telephony card with support of IVR, Fax, VoIP, and Conferencing for the European and Asian markets.

• Full international hardware and software protocol homologation.

• Technical Publications, software and hardware QA, software configuration and release management.

• Engineering tool development and process definition to address hardware and software product life cycle needs.

XYPLEX NETWORKS, Director, Littleton, MA 1997

PROTEON, INC. (OpenROUTE Networks), Director and Engineering Manager, Westboro, MA 1991 – 1997

Prior engineering and management experience in the minicomputer and defense industries at Prime Computer

(Framingham, MA), Solid State Technology (Woburn, MA), GTE Sylvania (acquired by General Dynamics, Needham, MA)

and Naval Air Development Center (Warminster, PA).

EDUCATION:

M.S., Computer Engineering, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, Boston, MA

B.S., Mathematics, with Honors, DREXEL UNIVERSITY, Philadelphia, PA

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