Firmware/embedded software Manager/Director

Javier Castro

Irvine, California 949-***-**** ac5p75@r.postjobfree.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-castro/

EXPERIENCED SOFTWARE/FIRMWARE MANAGER

Senior level technical manager with extensive experience in embedded software/firmware development, and testing. Skilled in project management using Agile/Scrum and/or waterfall methodologies; bringing products to market on time; working effectively with OEM customers; coordinating with and driving external functional groups. Successful in creating and managing development and test departments, while establishing and carrying out engineering best-practice processes. Inspire programmers to develop high quality code and to deliver products on schedule and on budget.

■ Deep understanding of software development ■ Excellent planning and organization skills

■ Create effective SW development and test groups ■ Recruit, mentor, and motivate programmers

■ Project management ■ JIRA, Confluence and Atlassian tools

■ Agile/Scrum and waterfall methodologies ■ Create and enforce schedules and budgets

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC., San Jose, CA 2014 – 2017

Director of Enterprise Software Development

Created and developed the embedded software team for Micron Enterprise Solid State Drives (SSD), using NAND and 3D Xpoint technology. Delivered several products with a team of 8 managers and 74 SW engineers. Using Agile methodology (Atlassian) ensured that development plans, schedules, and SW architecture made sense, were doable and challenging. Drove development programs from initial requirements, recruitment, code development, FPGA and SoC bring up, customer engagement, to qualification, and production.

Created cohesive and very efficient teams by focusing their attention on technical issues, by keeping them challenged and proud of the products they developed; dropping the turnover rate

Reduced development time by several months by implementing best-practice processes to deliver structured, reusable, high quality, and tested software

Delivered high quality code by ensuring that managers, architects, and engineers designed and implemented simple code and sound logic to develop creative and complex features

Developed resource allocation plans and development timelines to keep programmers fully utilized and productive and to facilitate constant communication with upper management

Drove deliverables and dependencies from groups inside and outside my organization to ensure SAS and PCIe/NVMe software was delivered on time and on budget

Mentored new and current programmers to produce and maintain high quality code needed for enterprise drives (HDD and SSD)

Enforced code simplicity, even though some algorithms were complex, so subsequent programmers can easily update it and modify it during the life of the code

Managed distributed teams in San Jose, CA; Longmont, CO; Minneapolis, MN; Boise, ID; Cheadle (Manchester), UK; as well as outsourced (contract) teams

SAMSUNG SEMICONDUCTORS INC., San Jose, CA 2011 – 2014

Director of Software Development

Expanded the department from 12 to 55 people in two years. Using Agile (Jira) and waterfall methodology delivered the embedded software for Samsung’s first SAS enterprise Solid State Drives (SSD), using NAND technology. After more than one million hours of testing, we were able to qualify and ship, in volume, SAS SSDs to the two biggest and most challenging enterprise OEMs customers: EMC and NetApp.

Delivered the software for the first volume produced PCIe/NVMe SSD in the world; one and a half years ahead of the competition. Qualified and shipped these SSDs into Dell, the first OEM to deliver PCIe/NVMe enabled systems

Created the Software Test and Customer Validation Test Labs

oThe SW Test Lab objective was to find as many SW issues as possible so other internal test groups and customers would not be able to do it

oThe Customer Validation Test lab objective was to obtain and run the customer test software on the customer test systems/HW prior to their own testing

We were so successful testing our products that the customer qualification went very smooth; EMC qualification takes 9 to 12 months, Samsung SAS SSD drives were qualified in only 4 months

Spent several weeks in Korea working with HW engineers to design the next ASIC/SoC for enterprise SSDs. First time HW and SW teams worked together to develop a controller that is SW and test friendly, resulting in a shorter development schedule. This FPGA/ASIC is used in all SSD enterprise products

Drove development programs from initial requirements, recruitment, code development, FPGA and SoC bring up, customer engagement, to qualification, and production

Represented the department in ISO audits and presented documentation, working examples and verified process adherence to pass yearly audits

Managed distributed teams in San Jose, CA; Soul, Korea; and Bangalore, India

WESTERN DIGITAL CORPORATION, Irvine, CA 2005 – 2009

Senior Software Manager

Managed programs across multiple departments to deliver final products to customers. Developed cross-functional schedules; led meetings, drove action items and presented status to upper management and customers. Created test processes and build infrastructure to validate embedded software automatically. Managed outsource companies in US and Poland to bridge resource limitations when new projects were created. Expanded the department from 11 to 22 engineers and mentored several engineers to become team leads.

Created a new strategy where one code was used for multiple platforms, shortening the product development cycle from 6 months to 2 months

Persuaded other software departments (servo, self-test, channel) to use similar common code strategy for SW development resulting in bugs fixed once and less merges

Increased product development from one product at a time to 5 in the same amount of time by institutionalizing more efficient development practices such as reusability, modularity

Reduced the number of bugs discovered during testing by implementing best-practice software development processes such as TDD (test-driven development), requiring proper documentation, design and code (peer) reviews and structured SW testing

Created a new SW and test development process where the code was tested periodically, test time depended on the complexity of the features to be tested. This new test process kept the code trunk always in working condition, allowing speedy bug fixing, and shorten QA qualifying times from 4 months to 2 months

Launched a training program to share technical knowledge between cross-functional engineers, to make them more productive quicker

Worked with several teams to transfer products from engineering to high volume manufacturing

Managed distributed teams in San Jose, CA; Longmont, CO; and contractor team in Poland

IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES), San Jose, CA 1998 – 2005

Senior Engineering Manager, Firmware Development

Responsible for two groups: firmware/embedded software development and firmware test. Developed a new-from-scratch firmware for the newest enterprise class product. Created and consistently met schedules and budgets. Ensured that the code quality was always high by constantly testing and fixing issues.

Managed the firmware development and test teams to create the first Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) drive IBM delivered to market

Developed and qualified SCSI firmware for the first high performance 15,000 RPM drive

Coordinated with and guided outside groups in Japan and Rochester, MN

Met with customers to define new features and obtain agreement on their requirements avoiding re-dos and wasted implementation efforts

Managed the test group to do comprehensive white box testing to ensure the new FW functions worked as specified, and the code coverage was at least 90%. This group ran FW qualifying tests and signed off on the code quality before it was released outside the FW group

Worked closely with customers to get their HW systems and test software and validate IBM FW on these systems to shorten customer validation time and keep customer satisfaction high

Constantly relayed information to executives and program managers to avoid surprises

Worked daily with the following OEM customers: EMC, Network Appliance, HP and Dell Computers

ADDITIONAL ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE

MOST Inc., Cypress, CA

Director of Software Development

Micropolis Corporation, Chatsworth, CA

Engineering Manager

Engineer II to Principal Engineer

Morse Security, Sylmar, CA

Firmware Engineer

Trio-Tech International, Burbank, CA

Firmware Engineer

EDUCATION

B.S.E.E. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA

Western Digital – Project Management Fundamentals, 2005

IBM/HGST – Empowering Managers Series Intensive, 2004

IBM – New Manager School, 1998

USC (School of Business Administration) – Management Development Program, 1995

AWARDS

Samsung – President Award (Memory Division) For Most Innovative Lab, 2013

TECHNICAL COMPETENCY AND TOOLS

Protocols: SAS, SCSI, FCAL, ATA, SATA, PCIe/NVMe, RS232, RS422, I2C, SPI, JTAG, Windows, Linux, C, C++, OO analysis and design (Booch), assembly language (Z80, 8051, 80188, 80186, ST-10, ARM7, ARM9 and 80196). Well versed on ARM processors. Familiar with FPGAs and SoC bring up, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, in circuit emulators, and their use to debug hardware and real-time software problems. Utilized McCabe Software Quality Case Tool; ORCAD; Schema; Microsoft Office (Project, Word, Excel and Powerpoint); Jira/SCRUM; Sharepoint; Visual C++; Borland C++; Finisar SAS and FCAL bus analyzers.

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