2011?2014

Rolle: Consultant, later Development Manager, Avionics

Kunde: SafeMINE AG and FLARM GmbH, Baar, Switzerland

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FLARM is an award-winning Airborne Collision Avoidance System for General Aviation. The more than 25?000 units sold worldwide to date have avoided countless mid-air collisions and near misses and saved dozens of lives. Assisted by a hardware engineer and the new CEO (from 2014) and with minimal involvement of the owners, I was responsible for the technical and business development of FLARM and its successor, PowerFLARM.

My achievements

• Leadership and representation:
  • Main representative and evangelist of the company at key trade fairs, conferences and pilot training events. PowerFLARM presentations, often as an invited speaker.
• Sales:
  • Initiated and drove several high-volume sales projects with Swiss and international customers, including market entry in Chile.
• Customer support:
  • Key go-to person handling 95%+ of incoming email and telephone calls. Translation of support issues into long-term product improvements. Responsible for main website.
• Product development:
  • Sole responsibility for software development of the new ?PowerFLARM Core? which soon became the company?s main revenue source. Successful launch in the US market.
• Release management:
  • Leading 10+ software releases including major updates. Strong reduction in the number of bugfix releases due to better tests, therefore vastly improved customer happiness.
• Quality management:
  • Ramping up of automated test coverage to 95%+ of the code base. Introduction of pragmatic release checkliststs. Planning and execution of road vehicle and flight tests.
• Technical Writing:
  • Main author of core User Manuals and several Application Notes and Interface Documents.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Participation and lead in several Search and Rescue events for missing aircraft. Investigation of aviation accidents based on FLARM flight recordings 

Winter 2010/2011

Rolle: Sabbatical

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• I went for three months to South America to fly a high-performance glider in the challenging environment of the Andes. I took immersion type Spanish classes in Chile and Argentina. 

2005 - 2010

Rolle: Member of Engineering Staff, Google.

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• I spent three initial months at the corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California and then worked out of the Z¨urich office.
• Besides being the leading Search Engine, Google offers a vast number of products for communication, business process improvement and geographic information. Google is known for its highly selective recruitment process.
• My most notable achievement at Google is the Flight Simulator in Google Earth. I initiated the project, pitched it to the Founders and and led three fulltime engineers during the development phase. My key technical contribution is a fully configurable aerodynamics model for fixed-wing aircraft. Other achievements:
  • A petabyte scale internet archive.
  • Search quality improvement by analysis of WWW connectivity graph.
  • C++ standardization.
  • Computer Vision techniques to detect roads in aerial imagery. The algorithms were applied to large scale Google imagery databases to accelerate the company?s mapping processes. 

2003 - 2005

Kunde: ELITE Simulation Solutions, Dübendorf (Switzerland)

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• I started as a software engineer and was promoted to Director of Research & Development in 2004.
• ELITE is a manufacturer of professional Flight Training Devices qualified for use in formal pilot training serving a world-wide market. 
• My contributions were essential to the success of the PC-9M simulator project, the company?s flagship product, and many smaller projects:
  • Integration of the aircraft manufacturer?s aerodynamics model for the PC-9M FTD.
  • Development of a highly accurate aerodynamics model for the DiamondELITE DA42 trainer.
  • Integration of original avionics devices into the simulators (Garmin G430 and G1000, Honeywell KLN900).
  • Development of a new type of electromechanical control loading systems based on linear motors.
  • Planning and execution of Flight Tests for simulator tuning and validation (from Cessna to Beech King Air).
  • Requirements specification and liasing with external partners like aircraft manufacturers, hard- and software suppliers, aircraft parts manufacturers. 

2001 - 2003

Rolle: Engineering

AKunde: MST Systemtechnik GmbH, Ranshofen (Austria)

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• AMST is one of only a handful of high-tech companies in the world capable of building Human Centrifuges.
• I used state-of-the-art convex optimization algorithms in internal applied R&D
  projects. 

1996 - 2003

Rolle: Lecturer

Kunde: Salzburg University

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• I taught courses for Mathematics and Computer Science students. Subjects included Computer Graphics, Mathematical Software, Calculus, Topology, Discrete Mathematics, Number Theory. I fondly remember a lot of positive and motivating student feedback on my teaching. 

1998 - 2001

Rolle: Researcher

Kunde: Salzburg University

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• Funded by the Austrian Science Fund, I wrote my PhD thesis in Combinatorial Geometry. After the thesis was completed, I switched into Random Number Generation (RNG) and Cryptography. I implemented a comprehensive RNG test suite, wrote a fast and compact Open Source AES (Advanced Encryptio Standard) implementation and gave talks at international conferences. 

1996 - 1997

Rolle: Systems Engineer

Kunde: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Salzburg University (50%)

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• After finishing my Master?s degree, I spent a year pioneering the introduction of Linux/UNIX systems at Salzburg on a part-time basis beside my PhD studies.