John Lekashman
15140 Lester Lane
Los Gatos, California 95032

Home: 408.356.8583 Cell: 650.302.4422  Email: lekash@bayarea.net

SENIOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONAL

Energetic, creative, and analytical contributor with highly developed communication skills and a track record of progressive success managing engineering projects and departments, hands-on programming, and network development and implementation. Adept at identifying the core issues and requirements to build and lead highly functional, efficient teams. Consistently meet and exceed management expectations and customer goals.

CORE COMPETENCIES

Management, Development & Staff Hiring - Vendor & Capital Purchasing - Systems Design - Emerging Technology Development - Local Area Networks / Wide Area Networks - Data Storage & Management - Telecom Infrastructure Design - Desktop Systems - Security Management - Facilities & Departmental Design - Programming - Software Development - Database Development - Quality Assurance - Strategic Planning - Budgeting - Project Management - Process Development - Product Development

TECHNICAL TOOLS

Operating Systems: Windows -  Linux - MacOS - Solaris - Unix - *BSD  - Real Time Systems

Computing Platforms:  PC: AMD, Intel - Sun - Microprocessors - Many Others: SGI, Dec Alpha, Cray, Vax, PDP-11, Convex

Network Protocols: TCP/IP - 802.X networks - FDDI - HIPPI - Fibre Channel - RIP - EGP - BGP

Routers, Switches, Hubs: Cisco - Proteon - Gigalabs - NSC - Nortel - Essential - Brocade, Others

Storage Systems: NetApp - Sun - Clarion - StorageTek - EMC -  Seagate - SAN - NAS - SAR

Desktop Infrastructure: Desktops Systems - Laptops - Printers - Wireless LANs - Telephone Systems

Security:  Network and Operating Systems Security - ssh - Firewalls - VPNs - IPSec - Incident Response

Software / Systems Administration: Internet search  - DNS/BIND - DHCP - sendmail - NFS - VxVM - Apache - Operating Systems and Drivers - Oracle - Weblogic - Postgres - Mysql - Most Unix Utilities 


Programming Languages: C - Unix Shells and Various Assemblers - Managed Group Development: C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, XML, XSLT, PHP, Lisp, HTML, cgi, CVS, bitkeeper, perforce


CAREER TRACK

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS	2005 - PRESENT
NETBASE SOLUTIONS INC (FORMERLY ACCELOVATION)	Mountain View, California

	Joined a newly funded company for business search analysis systems.
* Designed, installed, and operated all computing systems.  Brought systems in 30 % below budget.
* Ran multi billion site crawling, indexing and application software, and data management systems.
* Facilities, staffing, IT.  Good with a screwdriver.  Moved mountains as needed.

INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER	2004 - 2005
QUANTUM CORPORATION	San Jose, California

	Joined a new product development team creating next generation storage software systems.  
* Designed and built the infrastructure for systems development.
* Created an automated software build and release system, providing a consistent environment for developers and test engineers.
* Responsible for system administration, programming and product development, system testing, purchasing and inventory.   Reduced program cost by over $100K/quarter by introducing a process of rotating equipment from manufacturing to engineering to sales.
* Completed and shipped initial product.
	
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT	2002 - Present
BLACK CHASM SOFTWARE LLC	Santa Clara, California

	Assist a select client base in a range of small business systems troubleshooting, development, and implementation projects. Identify client requirements, and formulate cost-effective solutions on a timely basis.

* Duties and responsibilities include project management, budgeting, purchasing, price negotiations, sales & marketing, inventory, QA, capital justifications, and hands-on programming and systems engineering and troubleshooting at client sites. Throughout tenure, have enjoyed a track record of delivering cost-effective solutions on time and within budget. 
	
VICE PRESIDENT, ENGINEERING	2000 - 2001
ZEMBU LABS, INC.	Palo Alto, California

	Hired and developed an effective 45-member engineering team. Directed all efforts creating a distributed database system and automated management of globally distributed computer systems. Worked with executive managers and marketing team to identify new business opportunities. Ensured that teams adhered to software production schedule to meet delivery requirements. Targeted product to the CRM market.

* Responsible for 8 direct reports as well as indirect management of all engineering personnel. Disciplines managed included Systems, Applications, Database, Algorithms, Quality Assurance, IT, and Project Management. 

* Brainstormed and worked in concert with key individuals to personally transform basic technical concepts into a marketable product, managed the software QA and IT infrastructure efforts, and delivered Version 1 and Version 1.1 on schedule to meet all marketing requirements. 

* Worked closely with marketing department to create a product demo that had been delayed. Assigned Systems Group Manager to develop a demonstration product, resulting in a demo delivered on time and meeting sales requirements. 

* Noteworthy achievements also include creating and managing a professional services group with rotating responsibilities to work directly with clients on all training and product utilization issues. Client needs and concerns were incorporated back into product development. This group grew services revenue dramatically, and became the largest revenue producer for the company. 

MANAGER - STORAGE, NETWORKS, AND DESKTOP SYSTEMS	1988 - 2000
NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER	Moffett Field, California

	Enjoyed progressively challenging leadership roles for a wide range of functions and projects, including hardware and software design and acquisition, systems development and administration, the development of new technologies, project budgeting and scheduling, contract and cost negotiations, and facilities development and improvement engineering. Managed a $15,000,000 annual budget.  Directed and led up to 15 group leaders on multiple projects, with responsibility for 65 individuals in engineering and operations. 

* Led efforts to write software systems to meet requirements not addressed by commercial software products, worked with staff members constructing test beds to evaluate emerging technologies, and performed testing and analysis on many information systems prior to commercial availability.

* Funded and worked in collaboration with university and corporate development teams of key technologies, including BSD Unix, Global File System, Internet Gateways, RAID, and Free Software. 

* Managed routine and special network development efforts, including phasing out of old systems and bringing new systems online. Administered range of network functions, including desktop and server installations, applications, and system, network, and host security management. Directed an intensive retrofit of all communications wiring, when old installations were discovered to be a safety hazard. 	

* Discovered the "Morris Worm" at NASA, the 1st large-scale Internet security incident. Analyzed systems, isolated infected network segments, and directed engineering team in reverse engineering the worm. Successfully contained the spread of the infection, promptly contacted potentially infected industrial partners, and tracked down the source of the infection resulting in zero cost repairs at partner sites while bringing NASA systems back online quickly. Also served as an expert witness to obtain a successful conviction of the perpetrator.

* Built and launched large-scale enterprise network and storage facilities. Created and managed network-centric scalable storage systems. Engineered, deployed, and managed a nationwide network systems.  Noteworthy achievements in systems engineering include troubleshooting a highly data-corrupted Unix-based mass storage system. Fired the responsible vendor, hired a new vendor firm, and led an intensive crash program to design a new system. Developed and programmed an interim system in a 2-week timeframe. Dramatically accelerated equipment purchasing and installation, and reduced software development time. The system served 1500 users for a 10-year period, with a better than 99% reliability track record. Initially, it had 4 times the disk storage and 10 times the tape storage capacity than the previous system. Through routine upgrades, system in its final configuration possessed 20 times the disk capacity and 1000 times the tape capacity. 

* Enjoyed multiple awards during tenure with NASA, including a team award of $10,000 and 2nd Place in NASA's Software of the Year competition for the new Unix support system. This was the 1st ever software award for a non-space / aeronautic system. Other awards included the Exceptional Achievement Medal, Exceptional Service Medal, Contracting Officer's Technical Representative of the Year, and General Electric Ground Systems Department General Managers Award.

Previous positions include:

RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY IT CONSULTANT - Daimler Chrysler
SYSTEMS ANALYST, PROGRAMMER  - General Electric, San Jose, California
SOFTWARE ENGINEER - Megatest Corporation, San Jose, California



LEARNING CREDENTIALS 

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING / COMPUTER SCIENCE	1983
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Cambridge, Massachusetts


ORGANIZATIONS & ASSOCIATIONS

Contributing Member - Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 1986 - 1992
Principal committee work on RFCs 1122 and 1123, Requirements for Internet Hosts
Principal Member - BARRnet Technical Committee, during the founding and early development of regional Internet Service Providers, Computer History Museum Docent.


SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

"Building and Managing High Performance Commodity Mass Storage Systems" - "The Research Internet 
Gateways" - "MFTP: Virtual TCP Window Scaling Using Multiple Connections" - "High Speed Cross-
Continental Networks: A Necessity" - "Type of Service Wide Area Networking" - "Computer Networking for Interactive Supercomputing"


PATENTS

Scalable Hierarchical Network Management System for Displaying Network Information in Three Dimensions. #5774669