Engineer Engineering
Resume:
Bernard Fraenkel
Mobile: (***)
Office:
********@*********.***
OBJECTIVE:Vice President of Product
Development
To
create and grow a word-class product development organization that is
innovative, predictable, customer focused, efficient, and delivers
quality
products.
SKILLS SUMMARY
Seasoned executive with successful track record of
turning-around and growing product development organizations; Brings
creativity
and business-driven approach to engineering management; Adapts to the
priorities of business and those of the team, whether growth at full
speed,
on-time delivery of products, product quality improvements or cash
conservation.
Management techniques combine a theoretical
framework
inspired from Extreme Programming and Agile Software Development, with
the
lessons gained from 20 years of experience in developing, marketing and
supporting products ranging from mission critical storage software,
24x7 ASP
e-commerce web sites, IT applications, educational software, signal
processing
algorithms and firmware, video compression chips and hardware;
Strong team building skills; Ability to recruit,
motivate
and mentor talent;
Broad technical background in software development
(Distributed Systems, EJB, J2EE, Java, XML, XSLT, JNDI, Multicast-IP,
C/C++,
Linux/Unix, NT, Oracle) as well as management of Information Technology
(Lawson, Vantive, Business Objects); Large experience in signal
processing and
digital communications (speech, audio, image and video processing,
modems,
wireless communications); Wide variety of implementation platforms:
Application
servers (Apache, JBOSS, ATG Dynamo, BEA WebLogic), Windows NT based
networking
software, multimedia hardware and software, DSP software and custom
VLSI
architectures;
Active contributor to
product and corporate strategy.
EMPLOYMENT
HISTORY
From
To Company Position
9/02
Present Persist Technologies
VP
Product Development
5/01
8/02 VP
Product Development
4/99
4/01 VP
Engineering
8/96
3/99 VP
Engineering
1/96
7/96 VP Engineering - Founder
12/93
12/95 Director
R&D
3/86
12/93 TCSI (Teknekron Communications Systems) Director
Engineering
9/83
3/86 Research
Engineer
9/82
9/83 Research
Assistant
EXPERIENCE
9/2002, Pleasanton, California
Present Vice-President of Product
Development
PERSIST
delivers a software fabric to Global 1000 enterprises for the archival
of
reference documents. The AppStorä concurrently
captures millions of e-mail and
documents per day, and provides real-time full-content search. Thanks
to its
grid computing architecture, it is highly fault tolerant and scales to
tens of
terabytes of storage. Persist
was acquired by HP
on November 11, 2003.
Responsibilities
Heading
the Product Development team: including Java developers, QA and
customer
operations.Currently
developing the second major product releaseIn
the process of deploying a support partnership with the largest
Microsoft
Exchange system integrator Signing
up technical partners in order to build a full Information Lifecycle
Management
solution.
Accomplishments
Launched
company’s first release three months after coming on board. Shipped a
second
release in April, which was deployed at our first two paying customers.
No
Severity 1 or 2 bugs were reported.
Built
QA team, while also doubling the amount of automated testing performed
in the
development stage, thus leading to a more stable product and shorter QA
cycles.
Created a complete suite of test plans and a weekly quality scorecard
measuring
both regression and new features’ quality.
Built
Customer Operations from scratch: technical support and field support.
Established processes for both organizations. Successfully supported
multiple
beta programs and customers across the country 24x7 with minimal staff.
Created
all product documentation.
5/2001, San Francisco, California
8/2002 Vice-President of Product
Development
Bigstep enables Small Businesses to establish an
online presence and transact business on the Internet. Bigstep provides
easy to use tools and services: web authoring, web site hosting,
e-marketing and communications, e-commerce. We currently serve 9,000
paying members.
Responsibilities
Heading the Product
Development team. Initial size was 40 employees: Interface designers,
Java and HTML programmers, database engineers, content developers,
billing and Tier-3 support engineers.
Lead the Engineering organization through the
implementation of Extreme Programming methodologies; Created and
conducted seminars; performed group and one on one coaching
November 2001: Broadened responsibilities to
include corporate strategy and business development. Obtained go-ahead
on new strategy from board of directors in January 2002, and will
launch publicly in June. Also formulated new product packaging and
pricing.
Accomplishments
Launched 2 major releases in June and October
2001, plus multiple minor and maintenance releases.
Drastically improved Quality: Reduced bug count by
over 50% between the two releases; eliminated post-release spike in
tech support escalations in the 2nd release. Solved long-standing
legacy bugs.
Improved Engineering's flexibility and
predictability; Shipped releases on time.
4/1999, Berkeley,
California
4/2001 Vice-President of Engineering
Scientific Learning is a
neuroscience company, which uses patented brain research and
technologies to enhance human learning and performance. Our products
are multimedia and Internet based software that greatly improve
children’s reading skills. IPO took place in July 1999.
Responsibilities Currently heading the
Internet software development and Information Technology departments,
as well as QA and Technical PublicationsFrom
4/99 to 4/00 was also responsible for Customer Operations: Tech
Support, Channel Support, Field Engineering, TelesalesCo-owner, with VP
Product Development & VP Research, of the company’s product roadmap
Accomplishments
Introduced three new products; Released two major
upgrades, plus maintenance releasesCompletely
re-architected the company’s results reporting product to support all
training programs. In the process, migrated the company’s development
environment from C++ to Enterprise Java BeansIntroduced
formal software development methodologyIntroduced
automated software testing tools to QA (Segue Silk Partner &
Performer)In the
process of redefining the company’s main business processes (order
entry, e-commerce, inventory management) while simultaneously
redesigning the back-end architecture integrating the company’s
business systems (Lawson, Vantive, Business Objects). Created data
warehouse for business tracking and reportingTransformed
Tech Pubs into a department that not only creates user manuals, but
also web- and CD-ROM based training, weekly newsletters as well as
outcomes reportsFormalized
Customer Operations processes and deployed a comprehensive customer
resource center on our web site. Promoted Dir. of Customer Operations
to VP8/1996, San Jose,
California
3/1999 Vice-President of Engineering
One Touch Systems is the world wide leading provider
of Interactive Distance Learning systems. Our customers trained over
one million students in 1997. Products are highly reliable Windows NT
systems operating in a live broadcast environment. They incorporate
real-time audio, video and data streaming, MS-IIS web server and
SQL-Server database
Responsibilities
Leading all Engineering activities: R&D,
software and hardware development, QA & technical publications;Definition
of product roadmap
Accomplishments Lead the team to a pace of 2 releases a year vs. 1
every 2 years previously.Introduced 3 new major products lines, including a
browser based software for live training using steaming audio and
video, IP Multicast, pushed HTML content, and event archival in a
databaseGrew the engineering staff from 17 to 29 while
maintaining very low turnover1/1996
Pixel Engines, Oakland, California
7/1996 Founder
Developed product concept
and system architecture for a broadcast quality, low cost video
authoring system combining video capture, hardware accelerated video
effects and MPEG-2 encoding. Wrote business plan; recruited CEO and
engineers; raised financing from venture capital firm.
12/1993, Fremont,
California
12/1995 Director of R&D
Sigma Designs is the world leader in PC-based
accelerators for MPEG audio-video playback and encoding. Sigma markets
the REALmagic add-on cards as well as integrated circuits.
Technical leadership of advanced projects and
product architecturesManagement of the software and DSP firmware
development teamsDeveloped the architecture of two generations of
semi-custom MPEG decoder chips that integrate audio and video decoding
with chroma keyingTook the REALmagic Producer, the first MPEG
authoring system, from concept to launch. Won top international
industry awards at NAB and ComdexImproved quality of software - became the
recognized industry leader in robustness
3/1986
Teknekron Communications Systems (TCSI), Berkeley, California
12/1993 Director of Engineering, Personal Communications Group
Lead over 40 engineering staff in the execution of
several development programs generating $13 million yearly in
consulting fees. Applications included digital cellular radio, digital
cordless phones, application specific programmable DSPs and set-top
decoders for digital cable TV. Primary responsibility was the delivery
of projects on time and on budget to satisfied clients. Additional
responsibilities included the submission of proposals for new projects,
and preparation of technical marketing presentations.
Earlier, created and managed, with full P&L, the
Imaging Systems business unit: engineering management, sales, contract
negotiations, and client interface. Projects included a JPEG image
compression chip, an innovative scan format converter, and the
architecture of a chip set for a digital cable decoder. Grew from zero
to $2M in consulting fees in twelve months. Pre-tax margin was over 30%.
Previous projects include: Detailed architecture
design of a custom chip set for a low-cost CCITT compatible ISDN
videophone terminal; Architecture design, as well as low-level
simulations for an oversampled Sigma-Delta A/D and D/A converter
integrated circuit; FFT program suited for very long data sequences (217
samples); Implementation and commercial release of DSP-based 9,600
bits/sec facsimile and V.32 modems
9/1983
Entropic Signal Processing, Cupertino, California
3/1986 Research Engineer
Member of the development
team of the Entropic 8000, a 2,400/4,800 bits/sec speech codec.
Designed and simulated spectral analysis, digital filtering and coding
algorithms. Programmed and validated these algorithms on the company’s
proprietary signal processing engine, applying rigorous software
methodology. Product shipped in 1986.
9/1982
Electronic Research Lab, Berkeley, California
9/1983 Research Assistant
Simulated an echo
canceller for digital passband data transmission, using BLOSIM, a UC
Berkeley developed UNIX-based simulation system.
EDUCATION
Master of Science,
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California
Berkeley, 1983Graduate Engineer,
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris, France, 1983Advance Studies
Degree in Finance, Universite Paris IX Dauphine, France, 1982Graduate Engineer,
Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France, 1981
PATENTS US Patent 5,818,468:
"Decoding of Video Signals at High Speed Using a Memory Buffer".
Co-inventor. Granted 10/6/1998US Patent 5,818,742:
"Apparatus to Transform Time to Frequency and Frequency to Time of Data
Signals". Co-inventor. Granted 10/6/1998US Patent:
"Comprehensive Learning Assessment Tool and Method". Lead inventor.
Filed 5/11/2000
PUBLICATIONS "A Low Complexity
Bit-Serial DCT/IDCT Architecture", Gerhard Fettweis, Joseph Chiu,
Bernard Fraenkel. ICC 1993"Sigma-Delta A/D
& D/A for High Speed Voiceband Data Modems", Nan-Sheng Lin, Bernard
Fraenkel, et al. ICASSP 1989"Implementation of a
High Speed Voiceband Data Modem Using the TMS320C25", Tim Lu, Bernard
Fraenkel, David Hedberg. ICASSP 1987
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Trustee of the East
Bay French-American School, Berkeley, CaliforniaFrench citizen;
Permanent resident of the United StatesMilitary Service:
Lieutenant with the French paratroopers
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