Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Awards, patents and certifications
Technologies
Timeline
Generic

Vahid Kowsari

San Francisco,CA

Summary

Experienced Chief Technology Officer adept at leading technology teams to deliver innovative IT solutions that drive business growth.

Very hands on and expert in product development, project management, and implementing cutting-edge technology frameworks. Specializes in developing strategic plans that align technology with business objectives, resulting in increased efficiency and profitability.

Overview

29
29
years of professional experience

Work History

Cofounder and CTO

ixlayer
San Francisco, CA
11.2017 - Current
  • Co-founded ixlayer, driving product vision and engineering solutions. Developed and implemented strategic business plans to guide the startup from conception to operational success.
  • Led cross-functional teams in developing innovative solutions for customers' needs. Developed health testing solutions in Genetics, COVID, and Diagnostic testing. Led the engineering team to develop the backend system as well as a Patient Portal and Administration Portals.
  • Oversaw product lifecycle from concept to market, including engineer recruitment, product development, testing, and deployment in collaboration with the initial customer base.
  • Scaled from 1 customer and a few thousand patients to many national organizations and approximately 5 million patients. Scaled Engineering team to about 35 in the product development group.
  • Launched diverse health testing platforms, including various genetics tests and diagnostic lab tests.
  • Built and led a 35-member engineering team, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.
  • Designed and executed a comprehensive security framework to comply with industry-standard regulations, such as HIPAA, SOC2, and HITRUST. Developed IT strategies and set into place all infrastructure policies.
  • Collaborated with partners to seamlessly integrate the ixlayer system with their respective platforms, including Labs, Physician Networks, and Shopping platforms, using partner APIs.
  • Technologies used include Django Rest Framework, VueJS, JavaScript, MySQL, Docker, CloudFront, EC2/ECS, Redshift, Tableau, CloudFormation, Pulumi, Terraform, AWS ALB, GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, and CloudWatch, OpenVPN.

Director of Engineering

Wanda Inc. and Oncoverse Inc
San Francisco, CA
06.2015 - 11.2018
  • Lead the development of an Online Collaborative Web application to be used by Physicians at Hospitals to do Tumor Boards.
  • Doctors of different roles use the system to view patient information, view their MRIs and CAT scans, give treatment plans, and communicate with other doctors.
  • Doctors can have group chat, as well as audio/video conference, with all other doctors on a case.
  • The product was launched at 1 Dignity Health Hospital and is being launched at other hospitals in the Bay Area.
  • Was the lead developer, as well as the technical manager of the project, managing a group of up to 6 engineers to work on Backend and Front End features.
  • Worked with product management, and UI/UX to design and develop a complete feature set and schedule releases.
  • Developed backend models and APIs for the system.
  • Technologies used were Django, MySQL, REST APIs, Angular, HTML5, CSS3, Websockets, WebRTC, and AWS.

Director of Engineering

Palette Software Inc.
11.2013 - 06.2015
  • Responsible for Initial Design as a consultant and was later hired as Director of Engineering. Responsible for staffing, engineering management, development, QA, and deployment of a Cloud-Based System Management software for the Administration and Management of Large-Scale Tableau Server deployments.
  • Software was developed using Python, SQLAlchemy, Postgres, Apache, HTML5, CSS2, Bootstrap, JQuery, Mustache, Salt, and C#/.NET to manage and monitor customers' installations of Tableau Servers.
  • The server monitors processes, disk space, scheduled jobs, performs backups, and other management tasks.
  • Worked with the Founder from the initial idea to deployment at major technology companies such as Google/Nest, AdRoll, and eBay.
  • Managed a team of Engineers responsible for the various components of the system
  • Used a Kanban Agile development process to track tasks, implementation and bug fixing
  • Deployed systems using AWS VPCs, Postgres, Apache, S3, Google Cloud, Route 53, Ansible, Jenkins and Debian Packages

Director of Engineering and Sr. Embedded Engineer

Cognitive Networks Inc.
11.2012 - 07.2014
  • Managed a team of engineers working on the cloud-based TV recognition and ACR system.
  • Deployed 400-800 AWS EC2 instances using systems including Ubuntu, Amazon RDS, ELB, Auto Scale Groups, EC2, and using open-source technologies including Python, Nginx, Flask, MySQL, MongoDB, Salt, and Graphite.
  • Scaled the system from 0 to about 4.5 million daily active TVs in 1.5 years by major TV manufacturers like LG, Vizio, and others.
  • Interfaced with the Engineering group and external company to deploy Apache Storm and Kafka for the data pipeline.
  • The data pipeline collected TV viewership data from the AWS front-end instances and processed it for analysis.
  • Worked with company founders to develop new features for Smart TVs that allow them to recognize the content being displayed.
  • Managed team porting the ACR software to new TV chipsets and manufacturers.
  • Developed Ingestion Software that receives input video and generates fingerprints for the ACR system.
  • Ported the ingest and the TV client software using the same codebase from Linux to Windows and Mac
  • Developed monitoring and notification system for the Ingest Server components of the ACR system

Engineering Manager

OpenTV Inc.
01.2005 - 10.2010
  • Architect and Engineering Manager in charge of the porting of Adobe FlashLite engine to the OpenTV Middleware platform - Was responsible for all aspects of the requirements, licensing, design and porting of Flashlite on top of the OpenTV system software
  • Instrumental in designing an Advanced TV Object Model for exposing Set-Top Box functionality to scripting languages such as ActionScript and Javascript
  • Led the project from initial phases to completion and upcoming testing by Adobe
  • Architect and Engineering Manager in charge of the development of a Reference Network Package (RNP) on the OpenTV Middleware Platform
  • Transformed the development Network Package to a well organized, clearly defined and full featured framework
  • Supported a group of 30 engineers who migrated to it and used it internally for new feature development and testing of the OpenTV Middleware
  • Engineering Manager in charge of the OpenTV Packager software
  • OpenTV Push/Pull VOD Packager is the server software solution that allows for delivery of A/V Movies and assets thru Push Broadcast using DVB/MPEG2 standards or Pull using HTTP and TCP/IP protocols
  • Was responsible for interviewing, resourcing, hiring, goals, quarterly and yearly reviews, and other management tasks for 10 engineers

Architect and Tech Lead

OpenTV
01.1997 - 01.2005
  • Architect and Tech Lead of the OpenTV VSTB, which is a Windows based port of the OpenTV Middleware software
  • Ported all OpenTV Drivers on top of Windows32 APIs and enabled development of OpenTV applications without the need of a real hardware based STB
  • OpenTV VSTB is now used by hundreds of developers inside and outside OpenTV to develop their STB applications
  • Architect and Tech Lead of OpenTV Notify Server, a broadcast messaging system for OpenTV enabled set-top boxes
  • Notify Server was a broadcast messaging system similar to Apple and Google Notification services for Mobile phones
  • Lead Developer of OpenTV’s Email Server software
  • OpenTV Email Server was product that allow TV Broadcasters to deploy Internet based Email server to their subscribers
  • The server communication was based on XML and implementsed the IMAP/SMTP email protocols
  • Lead Developer of OpenTV’s OpenStreamer server software
  • OpenStreamer server is a software and hardware solution for Digital Television Network Operators to broadcast MPEG-2 compliant streams of video/audio/data which are received by subscribers
  • Extensive knowledge of MPEG-2 compression, Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Standards, MPEG-2 Multiplexing
  • Designed the SNMP Agent and MIBs of the OpenStreamer software so that the Server could be managed and monitored by SNMP Network Management software

Systems Integrator and Application Developer

IBM Global Services
01.1996 - 01.1997
  • Technical leader for the implementation and testing of a Digital Video Broadcast System
  • Managed the integration and Testing of Irdeto Conditional Access system with NDS 3000 digital video compression equipment
  • Received IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for my efforts
  • Technical leader for the implementation and testing of TME 10 NetView network management system for the monitoring of the Digital Video Broadcast System environment which included the networking equipment as well as the NVOD servers
  • System architect for various digital video broadcast (DVB) solutions tailored specifically to customer needs
  • Created proposals to customers for the solutions using various conditional access, digital video systems and data uplink capabilities
  • Instructor for a digital video broadcast training class
  • Area of expertise in Conditional Access System and MPEG-2 compression

Education

M.S. - Computer Science

The City College, The City University of New York
12.1996

B. E. - Electrical Engineering

The City College, The City University of New York
12.1994

Skills

  • Software and System Architecture
  • Information and Network Security
  • Strategic Planning
  • Product Management
  • Technology Integration
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • Customer Engagement
  • Resource Allocation

Awards, patents and certifications

  • OpenTV, Targeted content broadcast and reception system
  • IBM Global Services, Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for the Deployment of the STET/Stream Digital Video Project
  • Scrum Alliance, Certified Scrum Master, 03/01/15

Technologies

Python, C++, C, HTML 5, CSS 3, VueJS, Bootstrap, Django, Django Rest Framework, NodeJS/Javascript, C#, Java, Korn/Bourne Shell, PERL, 80x86 Assembly, MySQL, AWS EC2, RDS, SQS, S3, CloudFormation, Cloudfront, Cloudwatch, Guard Duty, Security Hub, OpenVPN, Graylog, LogStash, Set Top Boxes, Embedded Linux, iOS SDK, Xamarin C#, TCP/IP, REST, SOAP/Web Services, JSON, DNS, SNMP, Multicast IP Video.

Machine Learning algorithms for classification and recomendation systems. LLMS such as OpenAI 4o and Claude, Langchain, Training, Tuning and Evaluation, Voice AI integration. 

Timeline

Cofounder and CTO

ixlayer
11.2017 - Current

Director of Engineering

Wanda Inc. and Oncoverse Inc
06.2015 - 11.2018

Director of Engineering

Palette Software Inc.
11.2013 - 06.2015

Director of Engineering and Sr. Embedded Engineer

Cognitive Networks Inc.
11.2012 - 07.2014

Engineering Manager

OpenTV Inc.
01.2005 - 10.2010

Architect and Tech Lead

OpenTV
01.1997 - 01.2005

Systems Integrator and Application Developer

IBM Global Services
01.1996 - 01.1997

M.S. - Computer Science

The City College, The City University of New York

B. E. - Electrical Engineering

The City College, The City University of New York

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Vahid Kowsari