Ken Vilardebo

Satellite Beach, Florida, United States

ad06jh@r.postjobfree.com

+1-321-***-****

linkedin.com/in/ken-vilardebo-4a01305

Summary

Strategic, mission-driven executive, proactive leader, and trusted business partner with extensive experience in business spanning from small to large multibillion-dollar international technology and services corporations. Chosen to lead organizations facing mission-critical challenges; identifies and accelerates strategic measures that strengthen performance with sustained multimillion-dollar operational results. Growth catalyst who recognizes and capitalizes on business opportunities from joint ventures to strategic partnerships, resulting in enhanced profitability, reduced costs, and optimized shareholder value. Possesses a steadfast commitment to excellence in customer service, continuous improvement, and cutting-edge technology.

Experience

COO / Director of Operations

HEKA

Dec 2022 - Present

Key member of the executive team, reporting to the CEO. Charged with executive action to design scalable business policies, plans and strategies. Establish closed loop procedures with KPIs that provide data driven insight when evaluating overall business performance as well as individual sectors.

Oversee and drive special programs.

Optimize and Automate business operations with a LEAN Agile yet disciplined approach providing business intelligence to maintain industry leadership and best in class operations.

Lead digital transformation to deliver positive business outcomes, including revenue generation, cost mitigation and risk reduction

Collaborate with company executives to forecast and target comprehensive performance, financial, and growth goals.

Establish policies that promote a company culture of high quality, on time delivery, workflow efficiency, excellent user experience and superior customer satisfaction.

Oversee daily operations (People, IT, Marketing, Sales, Finance etc.)

Collaborate in M&A Strategies (investments, acquisitions, corporate alliances etc.)

Lead by example to pioneer innovation, reimagine supply chains, overcome complexity and mitigate uncertainty.

General Manager - Cyient Center of Excellence, Melbourne, FL

Cyient

2021 - 2022

Provided strategic and tactical leadership for Melbourne Engineering Center of Excellence P&L and overall management of Global Embedded Engineering Service Line with 12 direct and 1,200 indirect reports. Spearheaded guidance for year-on-year global growth initiatives. Led expansion and operations in aerospace, medtech, industrial, and automotive domains. Drove continuous improvement of the Global Delivery Office across multiple international locations and business units. Key customer interface for business capture. Reported to the COO and VP of Transportation.

Served as primary point of contact to develop customer-focused solutions.

Facilitated high energy recruitment, streamlining the recruitment process, resulting in over 500 offers in a focused recruitment drive.

Improved sales with incumbent customers with direct communications and partnership execution of manpower forecasting, planning, and workforce load balancing.

Introduced and closed new deals in aerospace, medtech, industrial, and automotive domains:

Aerospace – new video controller for commercial aircraft.

MedTech – embedded software on next gen LASIK system.

Industrial – CyberSecurity hardening of public moving equipment.

Automotive – facilitated agreement to provide 2,500 engineers to offshore customer.

Drove continuous improvement of the Global Delivery Office across multiple international locations and business units and key customer interface for business capture.

Managed engineering services performance margin achieving goals quarter to quarter.

Director Of Engineering

Trimble Rail - BeenaVision Solutions (Now Wabtec – KinetiX)

2020 - 2021

Full charge of all engineering and technology functions of the business. Masterful at enterprise-wide technology strategy, architecture, design, development, and testing. Built the R&D team, implementing a scalable and high-availability platform, building a culture of rapid, high-quality application introductions and refinements, and charting the innovation roadmap that supports overall business objectives. Managed a diverse cross functional team of 55 reports. Globally deployed product line of Rail Asset Inspection Systems utilizing latest in computer vision technologies, AI, ML, network communications, and Cloud applications. Reported to the General Manager.

Implemented effective innovation processes in an agile product development process that improved cross-functional team productivity.

Established Lean repeatable engineering and product development processes that resulted in cost savings and quality improvements with tailorable engineering, validation, and quality deliverables.

Achieved ISO 9001 certification in less than one year.

Championed CE certifications and markings for international market penetration.

Evangelized Agile methodologies to ensure consistency and performance.

Implemented processes, metrics, and tools that effectively reduced installation and warranty issues.

Facilitated and developed an effective intellectual property strategy.

Oversaw all engineering efforts to develop and improve state-of-the-art Machine / Computer Vision Systems, including electrical, mechanical, and software.

Instilled discipline of requirements capture before new product development commencement.

Provided full product line requirements review, resulting in converging multi variants to single configurable products. Led to improvement in customer satisfaction.

Introduced scheduled software maintenance releases vs ad hoc bug fixes, achieving a one-to-many force multiplier.

Director - Software Engineering

Alstom

2016 - 2020

Directly managed and influenced innovation opportunities and disruptive technology development across the global footprint driving $1B growth potential across four global product lines. Managed cost center software engineering budget and operations oversight for product development. Product lines included data analytics SaaS, autonomous GPS-based transportation systems, safety-critical Signaling Systems, and command and control systems. Managed 6 direct and 65 indirect multidiscipline engineering resources. Reported to Director of Engineering.

Nurtured and established multi-site relationships that provide execution options, including low-cost country solutions to effectively react to emerging market opportunities. Improved offshore team on-time delivery dramatically improving quality and team morale.

Introduced novel techniques to improve on-time delivery of key milestones. Incentivized with peer recognition of contribution and performance, including delivery on time or early, with minimal or no defects. This positively changed team behavior. Utilized rewards and penalties to achieve both schedule truth and delivery commitments.

Managed product sustainment and obsolescence mitigation activities for systems deployed globally; many systems in service for over 20 years.

Principal Software Engineer

Leonardo DRS

2013 - 2016

Team Lead and Principal Engineer for Situational Awareness Applications for Hardened Computing Platform to serve US Military. Led a team of six software engineers in capture and review of technical requirements, reviews, architectural design, performance, implementation, and validation activities. Individual contributor developing device drivers and infrastructure for Red Force / Blue Force tracking system for US Army.

Utilized Earned Value Management principles to lead embedded software development for BradleyFighting Vehicle.

Developed targeting software for configurable multi-munition MRAP-based weapon turret.

Used computer languages C/C++, Java, Python.

President / Lead Technologist

V_Systems, Inc.

2000 - 2013

Responsible for Business Strategy, Business Development and Technical Leadership for V Systems, Inc, a Multimillion Dollar company providing diverse engineering services supporting Department of Defense (DoD) and Commercial customers.

Low Earth Orbit and Lunar Deep Space space craft development, integration, launch and on orbit operations. Telecommunications, commercial avionics, electro-optic / infra-red and image processing systems. Served across broad US DOD and commercial markets. Customer base included US NRL, USAF, NOAA, Nokia (Lucent), AirNet, Rockwell Collins, and Lockheed Martin. Grew from consultancy to a peak of 50 employees and contractors with $10M USD annual revenue over the life of the company.

Products and services ranged from Space Craft Integration Test components, hardware and software,man-rated space craft verification and validation services, aerospace and shipborne reconnaissance and surveillance systems to image processing and anomaly detection algorithms (anything from intruders to anti-ship missiles), configurable airborne data collection systems to serve the civilian scientific community, and predictive analytics for various applications.

Provided commercial customers with self-diagnosing system components for remote telco switch applications, VSAT terminal power management algorithms, custom device drivers, and built-in test for manufacturing test support and in situ diagnostics.

Education

West Texas A&M University

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

University of Florida

Bachelor of Science (BS), Mathematics and Computer Science

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