Bennett Barouch, Advisor / Mentor / Coach

Summary

Coaching individual clients with regard to vocational and personal objectives and growth. For coaching on the more personal side, see my book, Eat The Strawberries, or my personal coaching website at Zen-ish Space. For vocationally focused advising or coaching, for individuals or for startup companies, stay here or see my LinkedIn profile.

Advising companies (especially startups) on product, engineering, and business challenges and decisions. Skilled in architecture, high-level and detailed design, and implementation of big data, high transaction frequency, always-on SaaS and internal systems, business or consumer-facing, from concept through finished product, from user experience through data persistence, and inter-departmental cooperation.

From my work at Hughes Aircraft, I have a patent for a system that ensures the security of integrated circuits going into satellites in the US space program. At General Magic I led Engineering and QA of a voice-based product that was essentially Siri, about a dozen years before Apple released Siri. That product was entered into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute, for Outstanding Achievement in Information Technology, and became the basis of the OnStar virtual assistant from General Motors, enhanced email service from Excite, and a free-standing service called MyTalk.

At iPass, I ran engineering and operations for the planet's largest aggregated data network, with zero end-user visible outages. At Yodlee, my team created aggregated financial portfolios for consumers, spanning multiple banks and brokerages, with no security issues. At ServiceNow, I inherited over 9,000 significant bugs and reduced that by half in less than a year while also releasing new functionality and creating the company's first QA team, first security engineering team, and first CI/CD system.

At Cisco, I led a team working on network security policy and appliances. At eBay I ran a team responsible for a data pipeline that converted diverse and generally low-quality incoming data into a well-structured catalog of information, using a combination of AI and traditional programming.

I have repeatedly brought product management and engineering together, created and led quality assurance and security teams, and advanced adoption of agile methodologies in both startups and Fortune 500 companies.

Experience

BJBarouch Consulting, San Francisco Bay Area and Remote, 2009-current

Advisor / Mentor / Coach, San Francisco, CA, 2020 – current

Coaching individual clients with regard to vocational and personal objectives and growth. For coaching on the more personal side, see my book at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLT2VVWQ, or my personal coaching website at https://zen-ish.space. For vocationally focused advising or coaching, for individuals or for startup companies, stay here or visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjbarouch.

eBay, San Jose, CA 2017 – 2020

Sr. Director of Structured Data Engineering

eBay enables tens of millions of people to supplement their income, or go into business for themselves, with little or no capital investment, democratizing capitalism. The computer science at eBay sustains over 1.2 billion items for sale. I contributed to the development of a novel graph-based data store to function at that scale, expanded the scope and quality of data acquisition, and improved the orchestration of traditional programming and machine learning to process that data. I maintained high motivation and productivity in a globally distributed team spanning the US, Canada, the UK, Sweden, and Israel, even as the team absorbed multiple changes in executive leadership and multiple re-orgs. Our most senior engineering contributors came to me regularly for guidance, as did several in product management.

Admissionwise Consulting, San Francisco, CA 2014 – 2017

Both Full Stack Developer and Business Advisor

Advised CEO on market stratification, development of new services, and staff training.

Conceived and built an information management system for this agency that helps students apply to the most selective colleges and universities. Filling all roles from product manager to database developer, I determined goals, features, visual design, usability, architecture, design, and implementation on a LAMP stack, producing a highly secure, responsive layout, single-page application. The head of the agency continues to be impressed with how much value it has brought, saying she could not run the company at scale without my software.

Cisco, San Jose, CA 2013 – 2014

Director of Engineering

With ISE serving as an enhanced AAA server at the heart of the network's security, employees and visitors can BYOD (bring your own device) and get onto the network while allowing each user access to only that portion of the network and those devices permitted to them based on who they are, where they are, what device they are using, the state of the device, and other situational factors. I managed a team distributed between the US and Israel.

ServiceNow, San Jose, CA 2011 – 2012

Vice President of Engineering, Platform Group

IT trouble ticketing, inventorying, and change management. Established the company's first-ever QA team, first-ever security engineering team, and first CI/CD system. Eliminated over half of a huge inherited load of backlogged defects and produced the company's most reliable release to that date. I managed people split between Northern and Southern California.

Yodlee, Redwood Shores, CA 2009 – 2010

Vice President of Engineering

Consumer-facing web-based financial software. Established the company's first-ever architecture team, and mentored an entire set of just-promoted, remote, inexperienced managers while transitioning from waterfall to agile methodologies. Implemented a plugin architecture that allowed third parties to add apps that make use of the company's financial data-mining engine. I managed a team split between the US and India.

Palamida, San Francisco, CA 2006 – 2009

Vice President of Engineering & Product Management

Detection of open source software within commercial code bases, to enable license compliance, and vulnerability patching. Transformed a one-person PC-based tool into a three-tier enterprise system, created an entirely new UI, and brought an 18-month data mining process down to a monthly cycle. Created from scratch a new product that alerted customers to CVE vulnerabilities in their code base. Transitioned the company to Scrum, greatly increasing transparency and reliability of development.

iPass, Redwood Shores, CA 2002 – 2006

Vice President of Engineering

World's largest enterprise-grade, secure, remote data network. Not a single user-visible outage on millions of connections per month running over networks operated by hundreds of independent providers around the globe. Created and installed a replacement for the customer billing and vendor payment system with zero business disruption. Completely re-architected the consumer-facing Windows client. Improved stability in backend servers. vetted and acquired three companies, adding unspoofable machine identification for IT policy enforcement regarding the device, and as transparent two-factor authentication for the user. My team spanned Northern California, Southern California, Israel, and India.

Comergent Technologies, Redwood Shores, CA 2000 – 2002

Vice President of Engineering

Web-based channel sales applications enabling enterprises to sell over the net without dis-intermediating desired partners for showrooms, installation, support, and sales. Produced the company's first-ever on-time releases, and vastly improved teamwork between product management and engineering.

General Magic, Sunnyvale, CA 1995 – 2000

Vice President of Engineering & Operations, Siri-like software 11 years before Siri

Director of Engineering, Siri-like software 11 years before Siri

Senior Manager, Personal info manager and web-based applications

Manager, Compiler (interpreter), and device-embedded OS and application development

Senior Engineer, Compiler (interpreter) development

Led development of virtual personal assistant technology that became the basis of voice-based assistance in the OnStar service from General Motors, a supplemental product offered by Excite, and an independent product called MyTalk. This work was made part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute, for Outstanding Achievement in Information Technology in 1999. It was essentially Siri, about a dozen years before Siri was released by Apple. Helped develop a write-once and run anywhere interpreted language (Telescript) in the same time frame as the first releases of Java. Designed and implemented a multi-platform build system, reduced time from spec to release, simultaneously reducing bug count and increasing release pace to every three weeks instead of every few months. In addition to running my own team, I helped grow the Engineering department by 150%, and had responsibility for directing the work of a development partner company.

Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, CA 1990 – 1994

Manager, Compiler support, software development tools and process

Engineer, Circuit design automation

Designed and implemented a hierarchical design language for analog circuits. Became the founding manager of an inter-departmental group to establish standard tools and processes across a globally distributed software company that grew largely by acquisition of disparate product lines, technologies, and cultures. Supported use of and provided some debugging of the AT&T C++ pre-processor when that was state of the art. Participated in an ANSI standards meeting for C++, brought in the company's first-ever performance analysis tool, major contributor to design of company-wide product documentation standards and development processes. The work done by my team of a half dozen people improved the work productivity and quality of about 2,000 engineers.

Hughes Aircraft Micro-Electronics Center, Carlsbad, CA 1984 – 1989

Engineer, Digital circuit design automation

Software for designing application-specific integrated circuits for use in the US space satellite program. Co-invented and solely implemented an interpreter for a language expressing complex digital circuitry in a manner that enabled less experienced electrical engineers to leverage rules and pre-built modules created by more senior contributors. Produced a patented methodology for QA-ing chips made with focused ion beam that prevented international sabotage and helped win a multi-million-dollar contract.

Publications & Patents

"MAP — A Parameterized Module Generator System Oriented to IC Designers", Scott Powell and Bennett Barouch, IEEE 1987 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference.

"A Signal Tracking Chip Utilizing A VHSIC CMOS/SOS Structured Custom Design Methodology", Eby Friedman, et al., Government Microcircuit Applications Conference, Nov 1986 Digest of Papers.

Patent-applied user extensible expression evaluator that supports concurrent independent name spaces, hierarchical data structures, and user controlled varying degrees of evaluation, useful in electronics component definitions, annotation, simulation, and behavioral modeling. (The company scrapped its patent program while this was in process so the patent was not issued.)

Patent Number 5,121,335, a method for QA testing and for maintaining the secrecy of integrated circuits manufactured with focused ion beam, X-ray, laser, and other techniques, and in need of protection against international or industrial espionage. Hughes Division Award for Invention, for work covered by above patent.

Led work that became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute, for Outstanding Achievement in Information Technology, 1999.

Occasional contributor to International Spectrum (professional journal for multi-value, NoSQL database developers). Keynote and session speaker at International Spectrum Conference.