Curtis Barlowe is a trusted, hands-on product development leader with extensive hardware design experience. He is a trou...
Curtis L. Barlowe Allen, Texas 75002
972-571-1502
[email protected]
Senior Hardware Engineer Trusted, hands-on product development leader with extensive hardware design experience. Troubleshooter by nature; passionate about design optimization for production. Firm believer that product quality is the result of the rigorous application of design principles and effective project management. Comfortable developing working relationships with customers, peers and management; anticipates daily management activities and opportunities to inspire the best efforts of others.
Accomplishments Individual contributor: over forty hardware designs of increasing complexity placed into production. Design leadership: established and mentored hardware design teams for several startup companies. Established, coached and mentored hardware team, completing optical networking product design in record time and establishing a new telecom startup entity. Followed product into the operations team, personally overseeing product optimization (manufacturability, testability) for volume production. Developed design cost reduction analysis methodology for leading contract manufacturer (CM). Personally identified $24.7M cost reductions for $149.6M total spend. Organized and led multinational teams to propose, develop and produce two volume products for company’s largest customer. Delighted highly visible private telecom customer by organizing and leading highly capable hardware and software development team in Bangalore, putting two cutting-edge telecom product designs into production with first pass success. Standalone team completed several more designs for this customer. Partnered with division’s top technical director and led multi-national design team to propose, specify and successfully complete the ODM design of a carrier-grade AdvancedTCA platform (including backplane, gigabit Ethernet fabric, shelf management, mechanical and thermal design, EMI filtering) meeting the stringent requirements of a leading European telecom customer. Reporting directly to CTO, led project management and engineering support team for entire company division. Developed and disseminated project management and reporting methodology; led diverse support activities including supplier relationship development, inventory, prototyping and lab support.
Skill Set Project Management: schedule development and optimization, budget tracking and management, metrics, risk management, risk assessment, gate reviews, management reporting. Agile Change Management skills. Written / oral communication, judgment and decision-making skills. Personnel Management: goal setting, career planning, evaluation, development, training. Process Improvement / Quality: cost reduction methodology, manufacturability, testability, lessons learned, change analysis (Agile), CM interface, metrics, continuous improvement, quality initiatives. Hardware Design Lifecycle: feasibility analysis, requirements specification, architecture development; technology selection, product development (specification, schematic design, PWB layout, FPGA development, pre- and post-layout timing analysis, layout-based signal integrity analysis), prototyping, debug, agency/shock/vibration/reliability testing, configuration management. Leading-edge Design: dense PWB, high pin count ASIC, serial interfaces, high-speed backplane.
Experience Flextronics International Plano, TX 03/2003-02/2009; 11/2009-07/2011 Highest Position Attained: Director, Systems Engineering Flextronics is a leading EMS provider ($34B Annual sales) with product design capabilities world-wide. Reporting to CTO, coordinated all project management and reporting activities for company division. Co-led development of AdvancedTCA platform for major European telecom customer. Entrusted by senior management with critical customer relationships. US-based leader of telecom product development in Bangalore for highly visible telecom customer.
Organized and led multi-national design teams (Hungary, Taiwan) for company’s largest customer. Established methodology for cost reduction analysis and execution of cost reduction design projects. Project management and hardware systems engineering: self-service kiosk design and manufacturing. Metro-Optix Director, Product Engineering Allen, TX 09/2000-06/2002 Startup company providing a third-generation optical networking system which combines SONET ADM, digital cross-connect, ATM and IP switching capabilities with a high degree of flexibility and granularity. Responsible for design accuracy and product quality at every stage of the product lifecycle. Eliminated the need for re-spins due to manufacturability, testability or signal integrity issues, through consistent application of extensive design and layout analysis for each board release. Worked closely with contract manufacturers, providing technical solutions to all problems that arose while providing direct feedback and supervision through final design revision for production. Analyzed ICT test coverage to maximize testability; oversight for Agile change management efforts. Metro-Optix Director, Hardware Development Allen, TX 03/1999-09/2000 Led a team of twenty hardware design engineers, layout designers and technicians through completion of initial product launch. Provided day-to-day direction for all hardware design and layout efforts. Managed schedules and reported progress to senior management and board of directors. Established design process methodology and guidelines. Mentored less experienced engineers and provided opportunities for growth. Consistently met or bettered initial design schedules through constant attention to interdependencies. Successfully managed a $1.2 Million layout and prototyping budget through initial product launch. DNA Enterprises, Inc. Senior Hardware Architect Richardson, TX 09/1998-03/1999 DNA Enterprises: provider of senior professional engineering consulting services to the telecom industry. Member of a small senior-level team that developed the architecture and development plan for a thirdgeneration optical networking system for Ericsson, Inc. (later Metro-Optix). Responsible for technology investigation/selection, design partitioning and architecture development. Developed the initial project schedules, detailed budgets, and staffing plans. DNA Enterprises, Inc. Project Lead Engineer Richardson, TX 03/1997-09/1998 Led a team of four senior engineers in the development of a T1/E1 ATM AAL1 Circuit Emulation card for an industry-leading ATM access multiplexer. Highly profitable showcase consulting arrangement. Connectware, Inc. Director, Hardware Development Richardson, TX 04/1995-03/1997 Led a team of five hardware engineers in development of add-on products for Sun workstations and PCs. Graphics/video solutions merging ATM transport, MPEG2, graphics and audio capabilities. Viewpoint Systems Director, Engineering Dallas, TX 03/1994-04/1995 Developed engineering and production team (five engineers) from company startup to full production. Led development of second-generation LAN-based videoconferencing product. VITec, Inc. Senior Hardware Engineer Plano, TX 05/1989-03/1994 Specification and design of three custom CMOS VLSI ICs for parallel imaging supercomputer. Development of 32-bit true-color frame buffers (including IC and board design, layout, test, support). Partitioning and redesign of first-generation image computer onto multiple 6U VME cards. Texas Instruments Member Group Technical Staff; HW Engineer Dallas, TX 05/1981-05/1989 Management and design of control/processing hardware for SSI/MSI, VLSI and Memory testers. Design of fast pattern overlay system for SSI/MSI tester; designed pattern memory for VLSI tester. Designed optimized I/O subsystem controlling VLSI test resources from multiple RISC processors. Electrical design of multi-million dollar Electron Beam Lithography (E-Beam) system: Personally designed a leading-edge multi-board pattern memory and I/O processor subsystem. Project definition, scheduling and coordination of activities of several engineers, technicians and draftsmen, resulting in completion of thirty board designs across a wide range of technologies. Texas Instruments Hardware Engineer Houston, TX 05/1980-05/1981 Designed pattern memory board for E-Beam system, and add-on memory board for the VAX 11/780.
Education Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering (BSEE), 1980 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
