Ben Olmstead

Senior Software Engineer

Specializing in Embedded Systems

ben+resume-1310@xn13.com / 1-206-883-7832
Sunnyvale, CA

Current version at http://xn13.com/ben-olmstead-resume.html

Keywords

Employment

Member of Technical Staff - Software Engineer (2011-present)

Google

I work on Google's Camera Systems team. This is a cross-disciplinary team encompassing mechanical, electrical, and software engineers. I am responsible for the entirety of the on-board software for Google's aerial camera platform, but also have a hand in other camera systems.

• Revived development on a business-critical system whose software engineers had all left the team before I started.
• Reconstructed system requirements from scratch, by talking to stakeholders and reverse-engineering existing code.
• Conceived, designed, and implemented a new system software stack.
• Added new controls to validate data in real-time.
• Greatly simplified support tasks by providing clear, actionable information in the system logs.
• Proposed ways to improve system productivity, and implemented them or worked with other teams who could.
• Removed software as a bottleneck for releasing new hardware to the field.
• Updated the system software to handle new system hardware.
• Reduced use of cellular bandwidth.

Senior Software Development Engineer (2009-2011)

(Amazon.com Subsidiary) Lab126

I worked on the Kindle 2, 3, and Touch, primarily on the system daemons, written in C.

• Re-wrote the Text-to-Speech integration in the Kindle, reducing errors more than 25-fold compared to the previous version.
• Fixed numerous bugs in the core Linux system on the Kindle.
• Improved logging on the device for diagnosing problems in the field.
• Trained and advised teammates on C, POSIX/Linux behavior, and shell scripting.
• Guided junior team members through implementation of new features.
• Worked with other teams within Lab126 and Amazon to agree on and implement interfaces for new features.

Software Development Engineer (2007-2009)

Amazon.com

I worked on the Global Financial Systems (GFS) team, leading a group of developers in maintaining and improving Amazon's C++ and Perl financial reporting systems.

• Created the product backlog for the Sustaining Engineering sub-team, and served as Scrum Master for that team.
• Worked closely with internal customers to understand business meaning and fix root cause of data quality issues.
• Initiated, designed, and implemented new controls for data integrity and SOX compliance.
• Mentored new hires on Amazon and GFS systems.

Senior Software Developer (2005-2007)

PSI (via merger with ODS Software)

I refactored a 1,000,000-line thick-client transaction-processing program in C#, solidifying core code while continuing to add new features.

• Reduced line count and removed dead code.
• Created unit tests for existing features.
• Decoupled code and applied DRY design principles.

Software Engineer (2000-2004)

Polycom (via acquisition of Voyant Technologies)

I wrote control software for custom voice conferencing telephony bridges, using C++, Perl, Java, C#, Ruby, and shell scripting. I took primary ownership of the end-user-facing web interface and the core threading, networking, and serialization framework.

• Rewrote the application's built-in web server, using heavily-tested core code to replace poorly-tested special-purpose code.
• Refactored the core threading, message-passing, serialization, and networking infrastructure to support new use cases, including pluggable serialization formats and transport protocols, and dynamic address registration.
• Worked with telephone companies to support carrier-specific low-level telephony protocols.

Education

Bachelor's of Computer Science equivalent.