Arizona State University

Harvard Business School Online

Bharati Vidyapeeth University College Of Engineering, Pune

Software Engineering Manager @  Illumix

- Determine how technology can be used to implement the business strategy
- Identify, exploit, integrate new technologies.
- Product development and roadmap
- Architect AI foundational models in collaboration with vendors.
- Cloud Infrastructure
- Technical team leadership 
- Security and risk awareness
- Market awareness

Mindshow

1. Technical Leadership:
      - Architecture Design: Define the technical architecture of the product, ensuring it's scalable, maintainable, and delivers the desired performance. Implement the backend system.
     - Technology Selection: Choose the right AR frameworks, tools, and platforms for the product development.
     - R&D: Stay updated with the latest trends in AR and AI/ML to innovate and improve the product.

2. Product Development:
     - Roadmap Creation: Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the product roadmap.
     - Agile Process: Ensure that the engineering team follows agile methodologies (like Scrum) for iterative product development.
     - Quality Assurance: Oversee testing efforts, including unit tests, integration tests, and user acceptance tests.

3. Team Management and Development:
    - Hiring: Recruit, interview, and hire engineers with the right skill set for the product.
    - Mentoring: Develop the skills of the team members, guide them through technical challenges, and ensure their career growth.
    - Resource Allocation: Determine how to best allocate engineering resources.

4. Stakeholder Collaboration:
    - Work closely with product, marketing, and design to align on business goals, gather feedback, and implement necessary changes.
    - Communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders effectively.

5. Performance Monitoring:
    - Monitor the performance of the AR application to ensure it runs smoothly on various devices.
    - Optimize for battery usage, latency, and other potential challenges specific to AR products.

6. Feedback Loop:
    - Establish channels for users to provide feedback.
    - Act on feedback from internal teams who interact with customers directly, such as customer support.

7. Vendor and Partner Relations:
    - Engage with third-party vendors, service providers, ensuring that contracts, SLAs, and integrations align with the company's needs.

Step Into

Head of Engineering

1. Portfolio Management:
    - Prioritize projects based on business goals.
    - Ensure the right balance of resources and efforts across the portfolio, optimizing for overall business impact.

2. Technical Leadership:
    - Define technical strategy and vision for the entire portfolio.
    - Monitor technology trends and evaluate their relevance and applicability across different projects.

3. Project Oversight:
    - Collaborate with project managers and product leads to ensure projects are on track, well-coordinated, and aligned with the overall business strategy.
    - Address dependencies, risks, and synergies between projects.

4. Team Management and Development:
    - Allocate engineering talent effectively, ensuring each project has the right skill sets.
    - Encourage cross-project learning and knowledge sharing.

5. Architecture and Design:
    - Act as Head Architect for all projects.
    - Lead architectural reviews across projects.

6. Operational Excellence:
    - Standardize practices for deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and upgrades.
    - Promote quality standards.

7. Stakeholder Collaboration:
    - Engage with stakeholders from multiple projects, ensuring alignment and clear communication.
    - Provide consolidated portfolio-level updates to executive teams or boards.

8. Budget Management:
    - Oversee budgets.
    - Make trade-off decisions.

9. Risk Management:
    - Considering interdependencies and broader impacts.
    - Ensure data security and compliance standards.

10. Continuous Improvement:
    - Look for efficiencies and improvements at the portfolio level.
    - Drive innovation and R&D initiatives that benefit multiple projects.

11. Feedback Loop:
    - Establish mechanisms to gather and act on feedback across projects, and address common pain points.
    
12. Vendor and Partner Relations:
    - Manage relationships with third parties that affect multiple projects, ensuring consistency in agreements, SLAs, and integrations.

ZOIC LABS

Director Of Engineering

Managed an engineering team for a consumer-facing Augmented Reality (AR) product with several senior engineers.
- Have the ability to understand engineers, helping them to break ambiguous goals into solid plans.
- Manage and grow a diverse team of highly capable engineers.
- Facilitate daily standups, planning, review, and retrospective meetings.
- Conduct regular 1-1s and performance reviews.
- Design and document solutions that drive value across the delivery cycle (project plans etc.)
- Manage each release through the launch process.
- Act as an owner, assume responsibility and drive issues to resolution.

Illumix

Software Engineering Manager

Develop, build and manage a highly customized version of the Unreal Engine 
Develop an AR app for iOS using proprietary computer vision library.
Develop, debug, profile, and optimize the software 
Onboard and train new hires 
Provide support and mentorship to junior developers
Setup hardware
Collaborate with art team
Coordinate deliveries.
Write documentation / release notes

Software Architect Project Lead

Took a break to write financial trading algorithms in python for futures, options, and equities trading. Traded S&P 500 E-mini, Nasdaq, and Dow as well as commodities - Gold and Oil futures.  

Developed machine learning models using OpenAI Gym / Deep Reinforcement Learning. Results with AI were good but not tradeable in all market conditions. More data, time, capital and a team is needed for training the ML network to make it a viable business.

I believe a small team can make a dent in this space.

I continue to invest in strategy development. It generates a decent return on savings. This is my hobby.

Career Break

Personal goal pursuit

Part of a satellite team that was funded by Google.
 
Worked on the Stadia project.

Developed backend solutions for brokering ML model predictions for predicting the next move of a character rig in real-time, and at scale.

Google

Lead Cloud Developer

Took a break and attended Harvard Business School Online to pursue a certificate in Leadership.

Then invested in and developed a few ideas to pursue entrepreneurial goals. 

The success was exponential learning in the areas of leading product development and individual growth.

Professional development

Developed a custom Rendering Manager in UE4 for the Xbox Trailer for Fallout 1976

Extended the UE4 editor interface by adding custom functionalities for tagging, sorting, ordering and layering vfx comps

Method Studios

Senior Game Engine Developer (UE4 C++)

Delivered AR experience to Fortune 100 clients for iOS and Android.

Developed a proprietary cross platform communication software (Android, x86 and
ARM) for smart glasses using WebRTC.

Developed a VR App Distribution platform on Android to bypass Oculus App Store distribution.
This was required to satisfy security compliance of distributing ITAR apps directly to defense
clients.

Developed proprietary real-time core graphics engine with C++/ OpenGL4.5.

Created web-based platform in THREE.JS and WebGL for artists to have real time previews of
their VR Assets while creating them in Maya and 3DS Max. Supported animations, drag and
drop and multitouch

Interfaced WebGL programs with VR headsets.

Inhance Digital

Technical Director - AR/VR

Bring hardware-accelerated interactive realtime 3D computer graphics to the web and portable devices like the Oculus Rift and Gear VR using OpenGL, C++, Java, Android NDK, JNI, Javascript, WebGL, and GLSL. 

Design and develop a real-time core graphics engine on the PC using OpenGL 4.3 and C++. 

Develop Android native apps for the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift using a combination of native Android development, UE4, and Unity

Senior R&D Engineer - AR/VR/3D Computer Graphics

Directed and Co-Produced a feature film. Internationally distributed through TomCat Films. Available in the US Domestic market through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble book stores.

Developed a compression algorithm for data transfer from the On-Board Software System to the
Ground-Based Station for the Apache Longbow, Chinook, and Blackhawk helicopters.

The project was on C++ on VxWorks.

Honeywell Aerospace USA

Computer Scientist II (Embedded Systems)

Worked on the Display Subsystem’s test team for Digital Engines Operating System (DeOS) -
Honeywell’s Real Time Operating System(RTOS) for commercial and military aircrafts.

Wrote device drivers using C/C++ for graphics modules, software requirements and design
documentation, test cases, software verification and validation procedures for DO-178B
certification for avionics subsystems.

Developed embedded test tools for avionics modules running on Pentium, PowerPC 7448 and
PPC 8280 using C and Assembly.

Developed drivers for ATI Radeon M9 for testing Honeywell's DU hardware II and III running on
DEOS. Written in low level C. Tests included RIB, Fiber Channel interfaces, video, and media
processing on de-rated cards to operate under extreme conditions of temperature and stress.

Participate in Verification and Validation activities. Interface with End Item test engineers,
product hardware engineers, and core software engineers to ensure a complete and reliable test
system.

Experience with Logic Analyzers, Memory Management Units, SDRAM, PCI, FSB, DMA, ECC for
SDRAM, Interrupt Controllers, and Ethernet drivers.

Wrote custom TCP/IP stack for flashing RTOS boot images over ftp

Senior Software Engineer (Embedded Systems)

Embedded hardware and software solutions for controlling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Wrote both high and low level tests in C/C++ to verify the PDMC and the AFDX Subsystem used in the Airbus A380 aircraft. 

Modified DEOS PAL to prevent FLASH module corruption on power cycle during FLASH write cycles. Generated regression and new feature test cases using DOORS.

Reviewed BOOT and PAL Software Requirements and Design document for Honeywell’s APEX hardware. Verified the embedded code complied with the SRDD (Software Requirements and Design Document)

Kutta Technologies, Inc.

Software Engineer (Embedded Systems)

Programming C++ software algorithms related to computational geometry for machining strategies for 2 – 3 and multi-axis machining. Worked on CAMWorks a plugin for SolidWorks, and ProCAM.

Develop and optimize the OpenGL rendering pipeline.

Bibhash Biswas