VP Technology
Resume:
ART MUZAFFAR, MBA
***.*.***@*****.*** | 805-***-****
SUMMARY
Visionary software development and testing leader, product manager and project manager with excellent team management and client-facing skills. Track record of meeting market needs on-time and within-budget. Turned around product development in diverse environments. Optimizes people, processes and technology interaction.
CORE COMPETENCIES
▪ Customer-focused innovator ▪ Software architect ▪ Team builder ▪ Change agent ▪ Strategic business planner
INDUSTRIES
▪ Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing ▪ Healthcare ▪ Financial Services ▪ Utilities
MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS
· Led startup from vision formation through funding, revolutionary product development and successful sales.
· Turned around complex product line development by focusing on product quality and change management.
· Built, managed and grew engineering teams and delivered leading edge solutions in several vertical markets.
· Architected strategic software inventions producing major benefits for employers.
· Authored patents on Physical Layer Automation for multi-entity, distributed Quality Assurance Testing.
EDUCATION
· 2010 PMP certification (expected)
· 2008 Executive MBA, USC Marshall School of Business, Los Angeles, CA
· 1985 BS (Electrical Engineering), NED University, Karachi, PK
LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Lucid Edison, Thousand Oaks, CA
Founded in 2009, Lucid is a startup renewable energy power plant provider to small- and medium-sized businesses located on West coast, USA.
2009 to Present Cofounder / VP Technology
Primary role was to put together the financial plan and business plan for the business and establish business feasibility, following up with researching the industry by visiting trade shows and attending training on various aspects including solar panel product assembly and details of how to put together PPAs.
· Attended several solar power trade shows to research state of the industry and to identify possible technology, engineering and product partners.
· Developed the detailed financial plan and business plan that were shopped with several investors (fund and bond managers, as well as private investors), SBA and several banking institutions.
· Sold the first onsite 50KW solar power plant to Best Western location in Orange, CA.
CCC Information Services, Chicago, IL
Founded in 1980, CCC is a leading provider of claims administration SaaS solutions to the automotive claims financial services industry. CCC’s client base includes more than 350 Tier 1, 2 and 3 national insurance companies, more than 35,000 repair facilities and more than 22,000 independent appraisers throughout the US. CCC has about 1,000 employees and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.
2006 to 2008 Business Consultant
In a consultative technology sales role, provided management consulting and professional services to national insurance clients like Metlife, Farmers, 21st Century, Shelter, Fred Loya, Bristol West, Esurance, Gainsco, Kemper, Safeco, USAA, and The Hartford.
· Automated and standardized cycle time reporting for strategic clients, saving CCC about $1 million annually.
· Conducted focus group reviews of claim automation SaaS application specifications, resulting in accelerated rollout to 22,000+ independent appraisers nationally.
· Recommended Metlife’s repair facility program key performance indicators (KPI) scoring methodology to manage payments to within 10% of industry averages. Identified close to $5 million annual opportunity.
· Provided quarterly financial reviews for national insurance clients including Farmers, Metlife, Esurance.
· Conducted claims process reviews for 6 national insurance clients and recommended process changes typically resulting in 10%+ savings for each client.
TCS Inc., Simi Valley, CA
Founded in 2000, TCS is a provider of customized ETL and financial BI data center solutions to the utilities industry. TCS’s clients include City of Pasadena and other local utilities based in Southern California.
2005 to 2006 Chief Technical Officer
TCS needed well-rounded business development and solution architecture help to penetrate utilities industry, starting with a strategic account (City of Pasadena) interested in utilities rate analysis support.
· Built up rapport with client’s IT and billing staff within first month, gaining access to database and IT systems.
· Reverse engineered obscure database content and schema within 6 weeks.
· Architected custom ETL (Extract, Transfer and Load) and BI (Business Intelligence) systems and oversaw solution development, delivering solution within 6 months.
· Negotiated $250k in NRE (non-recurring engineering) fees, followed by recurring maintenance revenues of 20% annually.
EZTopologies Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA
Founded in 2005, EZTopologies was formed to provide flexible and powerful software solutions to telecommunications and storage industry leaders like Cisco, Curtiss Wright and others to automate Quality Assurance test lab equipment usage, streamline test processes and to minimize test engineer involvement.
2005 to 2006 Founder
Primary role was to setup the company, conceptualize, launch and support multiple software solutions and establish sales channels.
· Self-funded and founded company from the ground up, incorporating in California for less than $10k.
· Architected, designed and implemented software using open source tools (PHP studio for development management, bugzilla for bug tracking and PHP for website management).
· Presented solution to several customers including HP, Qlogic, Brocade and Curtiss Wright in presales role. Curtiss Wright OEM’d the software to use as a sales enticement to help manage their switches.
EdenTree Technologies, Inc. (now Gale Technologies, Inc), Camarillo, CA
Founded in 2002, EdenTree was the provider of revolutionary physical later connection management and automation solutions for QA feature, functional and regression testing labs to over 70 clients including industry leaders like Cisco, Qlogic, Brocade, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, HP, Verizon, Nortel, and Spirent. EdenTree had about 50 employees at its peak and is now headquartered in San Jose, CA.
2002 to 2005 Director, Software Engineering / Cofounder / Member of Board of Directors
Oversaw all engineering, IT and presales operations, managed industry partnerships and authored the company’s turnaround strategy. Led industry solution development to optimize utilization of test engineers and equipment to help drastically reduce Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and Operational Expenditure (OpEx), with very high ROI.
· Architected and designed the industry solution and developed partnerships with 10+ switch manufacturers.
· Raised a total of $8 million over 3 rounds from private equity & VC (venture capital).
· Served as customer-facing product manager and assembled technical product roadmap.
· Built and managed a team of 7 software developers and 1 product manager compressing the roadmap rollout.
· Outsourced non-critical software development to a team of 10 engineers in India, saving $1 million annually.
· Boosted company valuation and increased intellectual property by co-authoring 2 patents on lab automation.
Vpacket Communications, Inc. (now Zhone Technologies, Inc), Westlake Village, CA
Founded in 1998, Vpacket was a leading edge telecommunications SIP-based VoIP router manufacturer, competing with Cisco, Nortel and others for market share. Vpacket’s products won the seal of approval from several national ISP’s. Vpacket was merged with Zhone in mid 2002 and had approx 130 employees at its peak.
2000 to 2002 Software Platform Manager
Hand-picked by previous VP Engineering to help setup a branch office in Westlake Village, dedicated to implementation and architecture of multi-service router suitable for multi-vendor customer-premises deployment for simultaneous VOIP and data operation. Collaborated closely with multi-site engineering teams, product management, sales and marketing staff as well as external vendors providing staffing and technical assistance.
· Successfully recruited, built and managed a team of 35 software, hardware and firmware architects, engineers and managers within 6 months.
· Served as change agent, leading company-wide software development life cycle (SDLC) transition to IBM’s clearcase-based software change management (SCM) for multi-site operation within 6 months.
· Architected the QA automation to execute complex data/voice feature/stress-testing requiring only 2 testers.
Ixia Communications, Calabasas, CA
Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA) is a leading provider of network performance analysis, and conformance validation systems to telecommunications industry. Ixia had about 175 employees and remains headquartered in Calabasas, CA.
2000 to 2000 Software Engineer
· Learned TCL test automation language and product architecture from product documentation and peers.
· Implemented the BGP automated test envelope.
· Assisted department head in writing RFC draft for MPLS testing methodology to be presented to IETF.
ECI Telecom - Telematics, Calabasas, CA
Founded in 1961, ECI Telecom (NASDAQ: ECILF) is a leading supplier of telecommunications infrastructure for carrier and service provider networks worldwide. From tier-one national network operators to city carriers, ECI's equipment serves as the platform for key applications including business services, voice, video and wireless backhaul. ECI is headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel. The company’s products were deployed in mission-critical installations at major international ISP’s including BT, AT&T, GTE and others.
1998 to 2000 Manager, Software Development
Tasked to turn around the access router product lines to meet contractual obligations and save the business division from impending dissolution in response to the overall financial problems facing the company. Worked closely with marketing, product management, QA, engineering departments across multiple locations.
· Instituted peer review code quality control methodology to stabilize product software immediately.
· Renegotiated feature set releases with product management and sales to stagger over 3 phases.
· Delegated portions of feature testing to QA departments at 2 other locations while focusing local QA on stress testing release features, accelerating convergence to phased product release timeframes.
· Led the transition to IBM’s clearcase SCM environment to better meet company’s standards, bringing in industry best practices, reducing concurrent feature development time to almost half.
· Transitioned SDLC to Agile method resulting in the released product having no critical bugs outstanding.
1996 to 1998 Software Engineer
Provided software feature implementation for the company’s ACP product line, working with marketing, product management and QA departments.
· Updated IP stack for compatibility with OSPF, required for pending $5 million sales contract.
· Stabilized FTP and Telnet stacks, which had previously been holding up the product release.
· Designed and implemented IPX and IP mobility support features required for BT sales contract.
· Assisted in stabilizing SCM environment by transitioning to CA’s Harvest with best practices within 3 months, continuing with the waterfall SDLC methodology.
1995 to 1996 Product Support Engineer
Supported product quality by providing software bug fixes in the flagship ACP access router products reported by external clients.
· Rapidly learnt the product architecture from senior engineers, delivering first critical bug fix within 1 month.
· Established reputation as IP routing subject matter expert by resolving critical bugs within first 3 months.
Health Net, Woodland Hills, CA
Health Net, Inc. (NYSE:HNT) is among the nation’s largest publicly traded managed health care companies. Its mission is to help people be healthy, secure and comfortable. The company’s health plans and government contracts subsidiaries provide health benefits to approximately 13 million individuals across the country through group, individual, Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and Veterans Affairs programs.
1994 to 1996 IT Help Desk Specialist
Primary role was to provide expert help desk support from internal call center over IVR/ACD and dispatch systems support personnel to internal departments requiring IT support in operating servers, network resources, storage, and imaging equipment.
· Successfully learnt the detailed internal procedures and started providing phone support within first week.
· Provided informal mentoring to IT engineers on WAN troubleshooting procedures during first month.
· Prototyped a rules-based help desk knowledge management system. Health Net later adopted this methodology for IT help desk knowledge management company-wide, reducing help desk expense by 50%.
ADC Telecom - Fibermux, Chatsworth, CA
ADC (NASDAQ: ADCT) is a world leader in providing global telecommunications network infrastructure products and services that enable the profitable delivery of high-speed Internet, video, data, and voice services to residential, business and mobile subscribers worldwide.
1994 to 1994 Technical Support Specialist
Provided subject matter expertise and technical support on usage and configuration of complex network traffic multiplexer product line to internal and external customers over phone and in person.
· Successfully learnt the intricacies of the product and started providing phone support within first month.
· Demonstrated bugs and verified fixes, working interactively with engineering department, helping drop case backlog below previous department average.
· Prototyped a software system to guide user configuration of the products, expected to reduce call center traffic by 25%.
USC PC Service Center, Los Angeles, CA
Established in 1880, University of Southern California is one of the world’s leading private research universities. USC enrolls more international students than any other U.S. university, with a total student population of 33,500 spread over 17 schools. USC has 18,500 employees and is located in Los Angeles, CA.
1991 to 1994 Network Engineer
Performed network, PC and Mac software and hardware maintenance support for various USC schools, departments, staff and students. Oversaw the successful growth of PCSC from 3 employees to 7, providing coverage all over the main campus.
· Streamlined customer service and pc repair procedures, resulting in 75% same-day turnaround, up from 10%.
· Mentored and trained junior employees, resulting in typical employee becoming productive within 2 days.
· Performed inventory control, eliminating leakage and optimizing parts supply to cover 1-week lead period for 75% parts, up from previous 25%.
GRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECTS
· General Electric (GE Water): Team leader: “Beverage Market Size in the EMEA Region”.
· Dollar General: Individual project: “Profitability Turnaround Strategy Proposal”.
· Robert Mondavi Wines: Individual project: “Premium Wine Market Share Protection Strategy Proposal”.
· Dell Computers: Team contributor: “Service Delivery Growth Strategy Proposal”
· Cisco Systems: Individual project: “Network Services Integrated Global Marketing Plan”.
· Cisco Systems: Individual project: “NMS Strategy Surrounding Sheer Networks Acquisition”.
OTHER PROJECTS
· Douglas Emmett: Developed, delivered and supported software package for sales managers to manage annual budget, financial forecast and BI reporting.
PATENTS
· “Quality Assurance Test Lab Physical Layer Connection Automation System” (Pending)
· “Device Substitution in Physical Layer Connection Automation” (Pending)
OTHER SKILLS
Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, MS SQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, .Net, Visual Basic, VBA, C, C#, ASPX, Java, J2EE, HTML, XML, Front Page, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Vantive, CCC Pathways, Valuescope, Subrogate, Intellisphere, Accumark, Autoverse, ClaimsPort, Visio, UML Use Cases, Adobe, ClearCase, Guidewire, SDLC, SCM, SIP, H.323, SOA, BPM, Crystal Reports, MicroStrategy, TCP/IP, HIPAA, ITIL, ITSM, PMBOK.
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