1991-1995, Student, Electrical Engineering & Communication Systems departments, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology -- Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. After finishing the first 2 years of the curriculum in electrical engineering, I switched to the new communication systems engineering department which in addition to being a really hot field at the time, also was offering a very innovative curriculum - like some classes taught in English, spending the last year at a new school in the south of France with students from other European universities, etc.)

1995-1996, Student, EURECOM Institute -- Sophia Antipolis, France. Specialization in Enterprise Networking as well as a post-grad program (DEA) in networks and distributed systems from the university of Nice. Having a French (i.e. EU) degree to show for sounded like a good idea at the time. For the 6month thesis/internship, I tried hard to find a place in the US, since I assumed this would be my only opportunity to work there (yea, right...). I ended up at the ATM Networks Research Department at AT&T, working on TCP performance over asymmetric networks (DSL, cable, satellite).

1996-2000, Member of Technical Staff, Bell Laboratories, Lucent (High Speed Networks Research Department) - Holmdel, NJ. My first job happened to be with the same group, where I had done my thesis work. In the meantime, AT&T had split itself again and we started focusing on how to apply hardware based switching and packet processing techniques to IP routing. This work resulted in building a prototype high-speed IP forwarding engine as well as in the following product development effort for a high-speed IP router platform (Lucent PacketStar 6400 IP Switches). Project is cancelled in mid 1999.

2000-2003 Co-founder, Xebeo Communications, Inc. - South Plainfield, NJ.After efforts of starting the development of a next generation packet switching platform at Lucent did not seem to go anywhere after quite some time, a few of us leave to start a company with the goal to do just that. Learning from the mistakes we had made at Lucent, we focus particularly on effective engineering practices in the development of a complex hardware and software system. As an engineering project Xebeo was exceptionally successful, as a company trying to sell high-end telecom equipment after the burst of the tech bubble not as much. In spring of 2003, I presented this talk at the EPFL communication systems department's 10 year anniversary. Almost the same day the acquisition by UTStarcom came through - providing another chance to bring the technology which we had built to market, or at least save about 50 jobs during very tough times for telecom engineers in New Jersey.

2003-2005, Director of Software Engineering, UTStarcom, Inc. (by acquisition of Xebeo Communications) - Iselin, NJ. We continue the development of Xebeo platform, re-targeting it from an MPLS services switch to a L2/L3 switch and in particular, an IPv6 core router. At the time, the product is ready to be deployed and generates some interest, UTStarcom is starting to fall on hard times itself and has to make some priority calls. One of them is to give up its ambitions in core routing/switching and cancels the project. During the 6 months or so before the team is finally disbanded during the next big wave of lay offs (after a very disappointing 1st quarter...), we spend porting the MPLS control plane stack to multi-service SONET/SHD platform for GMPLS/ASON support.

2005-2008, Sr. Software Engineer, Bloomberg L.P., NYC. Since the telecom & networking industry is barely a shadow of its former self and seems to be turning into the works kind of low-cost utility otherwise, it seems a good time to get out an try something completely different. The choices seem to be either Silicon Valley or Finance, so I end up at Bloomberg, which is hiring engineers with strong technical background and without necessarily much financial industry experience. At Bloomberg, I was working on the development of a sell-side equity order management system (SSEOMS) to provide a complete, hosted IT solution for various equity broker/dealer clients. I also get an idea how technology is handled in an industry where it is merely seen as a utility at best or as a nuisance and cost factor at worst.

2008-present, Software Engineer, Google, Inc. - NYC. Now I am working at Google, on various aspects of large-scale distributed systems infrastructure. I enjoy to work again in a place with an exciting engineering culture and the ability to learn a lot from many smart people around me.