Rachad’s Resume

Rachad ALAO ∙ 3940 ch. de la Cote des Neiges, #B-74, Montreal, Quebec H3H 1W2, Canada

Phone: (514)934-5543 ∙ Email: rachad_alao@yahoo.com

 

OBJECTIVE:  Design and execute innovative technical strategies.

 

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS:

· Years of technical leadership experience in the Silicon Valley and abroad.

· Excellent knowledge of Digital TV technologies.

· Outstanding experience in complex technical architecture designs.

· Led software development teams.

· Business entrepreneur.

 

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE:

 

· Deputy CTO at Bluestreak Technology (Montreal, Canada)                                                 September 2004 until now

Bluestreak Technology is a Macromedia Flash® based Presentation Engine vendor for embedded devices.

 

Responsible for Bluestreak’s overall product architecture.

 

Critically involved in the development of Bluestreak’s business in the European DVB market. This includes negotiating and drafting technical architectures for potential multi-million dollars strategic contracts.

 

Managed and led the development of Bluestreak’s DVB solution.

 

Architected Bluestreak’s Hardware Porting Kit (HPK) based Platform. This was essential to the execution of Bluestreak’s rapid horizontal market deployment strategy.

 

Managed and led the integration of Bluestreak’s Flash® based Presentation Engine into OpenTV Core middleware.

 

 

·  MTS at TiVo (Alviso, California), owner and CTO at Voodoo Technologies                        May 2003 to August 2004

 TiVo is a world leading company in Personal Video Recorder systems.

Founded Voodoo Technologies, a software development and consulting firm.

 

Involved in the architecture and development of  TiVoToGo, TiVo’s Home Media Option package.

 

Designed a multiple satellite, multiple Set Top Boxes, shared medium, DiSEqC based control protocol for a major US satellite service provider.

 

Managed the integration of Broadcom’s Linux MPEG Audio/Video drivers for the TiVo Series2 (Generation 04) Set Top Boxes. Ported TiVo Hardware Porting Kit and developed several miscellaneous Linux drivers to/for the above mentioned platform.

 

 

·  Architect at OpenTV US (Mountain View, California)                                                        January 1999 to April 2003

OpenTV is a world leading company in Digital Interactive TV software.

 

Worked directly with the Director of Software, the VP of Architecture and the CTO of OpenTV.

 

Involved in OpenTV’s technical negotiations with DirecTV and Echostar.

 

Lead inventor for many OpenTV US and European patent applications covering novel aspects of OpenTV’s back channel infrastructure.

 

Led the architecture design and the development of OpenTV return channel communication platform including OpenTV Gateway server and the DigitalTV Application Transfer Protocol stack.

 

 

Led the architecture design of Echostar’s Digital Video Recorder (DVR) capable Electronic Program Guide embedded applications.

 

Led the architecture design and the development of Echostar’s OpenTV powered Interactive Program Guide embedded applications. This project was critical for OpenTV’s IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

 

Involved in the architecture design of OpenTV’s next generation Digital Interactive TV Operating System including its Personal Video Recorder engine.

 

Led the development of OpenTV Html to O-code (H2O) transcoder. The H2O transcoder is a server side browser that converts dynamically Web based assets (HTML, JavaScript, jpegs, gifs, etc.) into OpenTV specific assets suitable for low-end Set Top Boxes (less than 40 MIPS and 4MB of Ram).

 

 

·  Software Engineer at OpenTV Europe (Paris, France)                                                      August 1998 to December1998

Developed OpenTV O-code common libraries as well as a reusable Unix based large O-code application framework. Provided technical assistance to Telefonica I+D (Madrid, Spain) for the launch of Via Digital OpenTV EN1 STB.

 

 

· Academic Experience                                                                                                             November 1995 to July 1998

6 months engineering internship at OpenTV in Palo Alto (California). Involved in the design and development of OpenTV's first Internet Solution (OpenTV Web).

 

Wrote an academic report on IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus.

Built a specification draft for a hardware implementation of an IEEE 1394 solution.

Designed a Reservation Algorithm for WDM (Wavelength Division Multiple Access) Optical Fiber networks.

Developed a WDM Simulator to evaluate the performance of standard algorithms.

 

Developed a digital communication simulator to analyze the behavior of coded modulations on a Rayleigh channel.

Developed a Data compression FPGA chip using LZSS parallel architecture.

Internship at Alcatel Telspace (Nanterre, France), verifying very high frequency components.

Upgraded a C++ based financial optimization software for the French National Housing Information Agency.

 

Developed a Positioning System for a Robot based on ultrasound.

Developed a Data compression software

 for PC in C language.

Developed a Window Manager Library for Borland C programming

 

 

EDUCATION:

· September 1998: "Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications"  (Telecom Paris, France) State Engineering degree (MS CS/EE equivalent).

· September 1993 to July 1995: National Preparatory Class Program "Mathématiques Supérieures/Mathématiques Spéciales". An intensive program emphasizing Mathematics and Physics leading to a competitive examination for admission to French graduate-level engineering institutes ("Grandes Ecoles").

· July 1993: French Baccalauréat (secondary school diploma) with specialization in Math and Physics. Diploma granted with honors.

 

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

· Computer languages: C, C++, C#, Ada, Pascal, Intel x86 and Motorola 68000 Assembler

· Computer and TV API's: OpenTV, POSIX, Microsoft MFC, Win32, Linux kernel API, Windows.net, Motif.

· Computer and embedded OS: Linux, Unix (Solaris), Windows XP/2000/NT, Windows 98, 95, and MS-DOS.

· Communication Protocols: Internet related protocols (PPP, IP, UDP, TCP, HTTP, SMTP, etc.), WDM protocols, HFC, IEEE1394, ADSL.

· Encryption: RSA, Diffie-Helman, El Gamal, Blowfish, RC4, DES.

· Data/Audio/Video/Image Compression: Lempel-Ziv, Huffman, MPEG4-AVC, MPEG2 Audio and Video, JPEG.

· Digital TV Signal: MPEG 2 transport, DVB SI.

· Electronic CAD software: Altera Platforms, HSpice, VHDL and AHDL Languages

· Internet: Linux Server administration (including IPChains based Firewall, HTTP Apache, SMTP Sendmail, DNS, SSH servers administration).

· Build environments, version control tools, debugger: gmake, gcc, gdb, ddd, sccs, cvs, ClearCase, Perforce, Sun Workshop, Visual Studio.net, Visual C++, Borland C++, st20cc.

 

 

OUTSIDE INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES:

Sports: Basketball, tennis, soccer, car racing, table-tennis, etc.

Traveling: Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, West Africa, etc.

 

 

LANGUAGES:

French: Mother tongue

English: Fluent

Spanish: Basic knowledge