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John D'Orto

Engineering management / AI SDLC

Executive Summary

A software engineering professional with extensive experience in engineering management, project management, AI SDLC, process, tooling and metrics. I have a proven track record of developing innovative solutions, successfully managing remote teams, delivering products on schedule with the desired quality while improving process and efficiency.

Experience

Senior Director, Engineering — Barracuda Networks, Chelmsford, MA
Oct 2015 – Present
  • Responsible for standardizing process, tools, automation and metrics across all of engineering at the company.
  • Led my engineering team to increase commits 165% in the past year + through AI adoption.
  • Led my team to a high degree of automation. 100% of API and 94% of UI tests automated with tens of thousands of unit tests.
  • Worked with cross functional stakeholders to regularly deliver releases on time and with high quality.
  • Significantly increased the burn rate and efficiency of engineering team by devising metrics driven hardware improvements and engineering process improvements.
  • Reduced engineering machine time by 85% by utilizing general compute, performance, storage and virtualization expertise to roll out engineering infrastructure improvements.
  • Resolved impediments for the teams at a scrum of scrums level.
Senior Quality Engineering Manager — Intronis, Chelmsford, MA
Nov 2011 – Oct 2015
  • Provided SQE vision and drove software quality engineering process, metrics and tools initiatives.
  • Project managed remote teams in multiple geographic locations working on multiple releases.
  • Significantly improved product quality, testability and supportability by bringing expertise to bear during all SDLC phases.
  • Assisted in the design of a cloud based disaster recovery solution for VMware, Hyper-V VMs and physical system images.
  • Conceived and detailed major new product functionality that the executive staff and board of directors have approved to be added to the Intronis product roadmap.
  • Assisted in the transition of the engineering team from waterfall to Agile Scrum.
  • Architected Intronis Uptime/Longevity test suite.
Senior Quality Engineering Manager — VMware, Inc, Cambridge, MA
Aug 2007 – Oct 2011
  • Project managed 28 black box, white box and G11n QA engineers in 4 time zones working on a complex, enterprise-level disaster recovery solution — Site Recovery Manager.
  • Grew a highly skilled team from the ground up. Project grew from $0 to $100 million per year in business. Won best disaster recovery product of the year award 2008.
  • Drove major initiatives for continual process improvement.
  • Developed team skills and careers, performed reviews, responsible for hiring and managing out low performers.
  • Maintained project dashboard and tracked all key quality metrics.
  • Hosted weekly team meetings and all defect triage meetings.
  • Reported/presented detailed operational, manual test & automation project status to sr. executive team.
  • Participated in MRD, PRD and all Dev spec reviews and sign off on phase exits.
  • Responsible for entire QA project including scheduling, resource planning and equipment sourcing.
  • Complex problem solving and risk management.
  • Promoted twice during tenure.
Software Quality Engineering Team Lead — Palm, Inc, Andover, MA
Jan 2007 – Aug 2007
  • Managed the day-to-day operation of an external group of test resources. Created project plans and schedules. Assured milestones were met on time, reported test metrics and mitigated project risk.
  • Worked within a large cross-functional infrastructure with many dependencies.
  • Designed quality into Palm’s next generation products by countering FRD and development design specifications with proposals for algorithmic and code simplification. The results significantly reduced development and test cycles and increased product quality.
Founder/Inventor/Artist Relations — Tweak Head Technology, Chelmsford, MA
Oct 2005 – Oct 2008
  • Co-invented a guitar signal enhancement device.
  • Created company website.
  • Testing of all company products.
  • Launched a successful hardware beta program. Recruited world’s best beta candidates and collected feedback.
  • Device manufacturing.
  • Developed numerous print and electronic ad campaigns.
  • Artist relations.
Senior Quality Engineer - Team Lead — Centra Software, Lexington, MA
Sep 2003 – Jun 2006
  • QA Team Lead for Centra’s first Mac OS X client release.
  • Co-designed functional behavior for portions of Centra’s next generation Windows XP/2000 video & VoIP client/server product.
  • Significantly improved the quality process by introducing efficient procedures & methodology.
  • Designed quality & testability into product components.
  • Created VB enabled Excel documents to track project status and capture test metrics.
  • Trained development & QA teams in Mac OS X technology.
Quality Engineering Consultant — Eastman Kodak Corporation, Lowell, MA
Jun 2000 – Sep 2000, Mar 2002 – Aug 2003
  • Worked with the QA team to qualify a multi-lingual, 1 million unit per month shrink-wrapped software package (Kodak Picture CD).
  • Utilized Mac OS X and UNIX debugging skills to uncover numerous low level software defects. Correction of these defects improved performance of Kodak Picture CD by up to 200%.
  • Created technical documents that have been incorporated into engineering specifications. Authored and revised numerous test plans for the Software Quality team. Designed test specifications and qualified a HTTPS client application for purchasing and viewing photos on the web (Kodak EasyShare).
  • Researched and implemented disk cloning and archiving methods that greatly improved the productivity of the test team while adding maximum control within the test environment.
Senior Quality Engineer — LifeClips, Acton, MA
Sep 2000 – Mar 2002
  • Drove successful hardware cost savings effort that helped save the company $2.5 million during second year of operation.
  • Researched and implemented a cost effective, fully automated process of enhancing consumer level audio for tape to DVD conversion. Utilized extensive audio background to qualify an automated means of normalizing and performing noise reduction as part of the DVD conversion process.
  • Researched, qualified and deployed software that allowed for complete remote control, cloning and/or software installation for hundreds of networked Windows NT & Windows 2000 computers. Process was implemented at extremely low cost to the company.
  • Configured and qualified a fully automated, 78 step process for converting analog videotape to DVD. Conversion included shared processing between many CPUs within a large network infrastructure.
Quality Engineering Consultant — CertCo, Cambridge, MA
Dec 1999 – Jun 2000
  • Designed test specifications and qualified an application for high value, secure online transactions in the Windows NT Server environment.
  • Created WinRunner 6 based automated tests.
  • Set up a complex network of OCSP responder systems using knowledge of PKI, digital signatures and SSL.
Quality Engineering Consultant — Lucent Technologies, Marlboro, MA
Sep 1999 – Dec 1999
  • Qualified all software and hardware subsystems for Lucent’s fault tolerant server product line. Qualification included manual and automated software, hardware and embedded device level driver functionality tests under HPUX UNIX release 11.
  • Performed a number of UNIX administrative duties such as installing and configuring complex Ethernet, T1/E1 and LVD SCSI peripheral board combinations.
Hardware Quality Engineering Team Leader — Avid Technology, Tewksbury, MA
Apr 1994 – Sep 1999
  • Developed and executed test plans for all software and hardware subsystems in Avid’s professional products division. Testing consisted of software and hardware functional and embedded device level drivers for both Apple Macintosh and Windows OS. Developed expertise in storage related products.
  • Created project plans with time, equipment and resource estimates. Managed priorities and ensured that milestones were met. Interfaced with all levels of staff involved in the product life cycle process including customers and product designers.
  • Coordinated the day to day operations of five QE team members that were responsible for functional testing of software, hardware and diagnostic utilities.
  • Reviewed and signed for documentation and engineering change orders.
  • Performed complex multi-platform system installations. Provided trade show technical support.

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Sound Recording Technology — University of Massachusetts
Dec 1993

Software Experience

  • Windows
  • Mac OS X
  • Linux
  • VMware vSphere
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Jira
  • Confluence
  • HTML editing
  • Office 365
  • MS Project
  • Digidesign Pro Tools
  • Apple Logic Pro
  • MIDI
  • SSL & HTTP(S)
  • VOIP
  • LDAP
  • TCP/IP
  • SMTP
  • POP3
  • IMAP
  • Microsoft Exchange Active Sync
  • Network administration
  • Github
  • ApTest Manager
  • Jellyfish
  • AI SDLC

Hardware Experience

  • SAN/storage devices and management
  • iSCSI
  • HP Switches
  • Thunderbolt
  • Macintosh hardware
  • 802.11x
  • Bluetooth
  • SCSI bus signal integrity and performance testing
  • Fibre Channel devices and controllers
  • Fault Tolerant Servers
  • Flash memory
  • Photography
  • Scanners
  • Video cameras
  • Smartphones

Noteworthy

  • Excellent problem solving and troubleshooting skills.
  • Scored in the 100th percentile on visual-spatial intelligence scale.
  • Scored in the 95th percentile on the mathematical intelligence scale.
  • Expert in audio and acoustics.
  • Conceptualized the Power Management Reset Unit for Apple Computer.
  • Co-invented the ToneFREQ signal processing device and the SCSI II terminator.
  • Musician – guitarist, recording/mixing/mastering engineer.

Professional Affiliations

  • Certified Scrum Master