University of California, San Diego

Firmware Engineer at Apple

Culver City, California, United States

- Designed the communication protocol used on W1-based Beats products* Developed drivers for noise-cancellation codecs* Set up the software for production line testing

Apple

Firmware Engineer

Firmware lead for two of the most popular wireless headphones on the market from start of product development (Powerbeats2 Wireless and Solo2 Wireless).

Beats by Dr. Dre

Embedded Systems Engineer

Designed an E-ink display driver fitted for Qualcomm's proprietary OS. Developed a GUI controller for a MiFi device with an OLED TFT Matrix display. Worked with other members of my team to ensure simple and efficient interfaces between the GUI controller and various software modules. Ported driver functionality for OLED and LCD into bootloader code to power on displays earlier in the boot process. Optimized CPU frequency scaling settings to increase device battery life. Designed and developed an API on the Linux platform to control voice call operations. Collaborated with team to provide software that simulates land-line phone functionality.* Consistently noted in performance evaluations as one of the top contributors on our team.* Mobile hotspot product with E-ink status display (MiFi 4510) has been recognized as a winner in the 2011 CTIA  Emerging Technology Awards in the Mobile Consumer Electronics: Accessories category.* Mobile hotspot product with OLED interactive display (MiFi 4620L) was named Editor's Choice by PC Mag.* Company hit milestone of shipping its three millionth MiFi 2 device (hotspot with touchscreen LCD) within a year.* MiFi 2, the first device with CPU frequency scaling, has received the most acclaim for its 11-hour battery life.

Novatel Wireless

Designed, developed, and provided support for a Qt Windows application called GPSControlPanel which controls GPS operation on the company's mobile hotspot product (i.e. MiFi). Wrote test firmware for the MiFi that would enable it to use its cellular data connection to shorten the amount of time it takes for the GPS service to lock onto the minimum number of satellites required. Developed a suite of Linux tools for developers to tailor firmware binaries for NAND flash gang programmers in the factory. Modified a GNU tool to handle the writing of a new error-correcting code (ECC) algorithm to flash.* Verizon Wireless incorporated the GPS Control Panel application into their connection manager VZAM, which is packaged with the MiFi.* Flash utility has officially been integrated into company's factory test process.* Was specifically requested for at the end of my rotation program by 2 of the 3 the departments I rotated through.

Rotation Engineer

Developed and debugged application software (Streaming Services) that showcased the capability of our single-chip CMOS Wireless USB solution. This application involved a client-server model which streamed audio/video content in order to demonstrate the high throughput our product offered. Designed a way to generate a Python test interface given a C header file from the firmware codebase. This kept the Python test harness synchronized with the codebase and streamlined the automated regression testing process for the firmware. Familiarized myself with debugging over JTAG. Created a web interface with a Perl backend for processing engineering build requests. * Improved the quality of an application of the Wireless USB technology involving the streaming of high-bandwidth media * Streaming Services was used at interoperability shows to prove that our product could provide Wireless USB functionality to any USB-certified devices.

Staccato Communications

Embedded Software Engineer

Created forms with which student organizations can request the university for funding trips and various university staff members can approve of them. Modified backend PHP scripts and MySQL queries to produce XHTML-compliant forms that check and store user input and email specified persons as they enter into an approval process upon submission. Learned the usage of web development tools such as WinSCP and phpMyAdmin.

Associated Students, UCSD

Webmaster

Tested and validated software for various Wireless USB solutions by testing their interoperability with a number of USB devices. Gave detailed tracking report of progress through each release of firmware. Actively implemented ways to automate testing. Aided in the development of a Python library with which to send commands down to the chip and enabling black box testability of the chip’s firmware.

Systems Test Engineering Intern

Developed tools for streamlining the process of updating the Pfizer Global Virtual Library, a graphical lexicon for chemical compounds.  Created a Java component combined with SQL for Pipeline Pilot using Eclipse and various Unix shell scripts.

Tom Kim