Sam Freed - CV

31 Habanai St.
Jerusalem 96264
Israel
9 Lower Drumcondra Rd
Dublin 9
Ireland
+972 54 4925 747 - Cell
+972 2 652 5072 - Home
site@freed.net

Summary

A senior professional/project leader with 24 years of experience in both the Software-Manufacturing and Business-Application sides of IT. Involved in technical aspects of Linux and other open-source projects. Worked in 7 different countries, delivering projects on time and on budget.

Arenas

Software development and manufacturing, Telecom Billing, Training, Government agencies, Banking, start-ups.

Technologies

Linux (RedHat, Debian), Check Point FireWall-1, Mac OSx, UNIX: HP, IBM, Sun, PC. TCP/IP, Oracle, Xwindows, DEC & IBM proprietary systems.

Work Experience

2007-Current

2007- Current Mental Engines

Founder and CEO of Mental Engines.

2002-2007 Consulting

Main assignments:
  • An IT Security project for a manufacturing multinational based in the UAE. Work included field inspections, on-site consulting, producting reports and staff training, and coordination of several consulting firms (3 months)
  • Assisting a Hawaii-based music-software startup with their relationships with various open-source teams. This included handling legal issues with licensing schemes, coordinating software development across 3 continents, with several engineers working out of their homes, and interacting with the market of music distribution and alternative labels. (18 months)
  • Consulting an Interactive-TV startup on business strategy, Capital rounds, etc. (14 months, part time)
  • Conceiving, presenting and raising finance for Real-21, an innovative real-estate arbitrage outfit investing in Budapest and Buenos Aires. (18 months)
  • An Open Source (voluntary) project adapting Linux for Centrino laptops, specifically Toshiba's R100.

2001 First Access, Tel Aviv

As VP Products, led the design & development of the company's main product, a FireWall for BlueTooth wireless communications protocols. Additionally, participated in Business Development, leading to alliances with market leaders in the field.

2000-01 IdentiSoft, Tel Aviv

Founder & CEO of start-up company introducing a revolutionary concept in Software Piracy Prevention. Invented several software processes & business concepts, some patented in the USA.

Led the company's formation, capital rounds, product + market development. The company was successfully merged with First Access.

1996-99 Check Point, Tel Aviv

Projects manager reporting to VP of international operations with responsibility for: 
  • Delivery of the company's flagship product (FireWall-1) for the IBM and HP accounts. 
  • Introduction of automated product and performance testing.
  • Certification of products under the US, European and Australian Defense-Communication standards (CC, ITSEC).
  • Introduction of GUI usability analysis.

1995-96 Softel, Jerusalem

A technical-lead role introducing international-level work-practices into the technical team of this Israeli IBM subsidiary. The main product being developed was a document-processing & OCR package, aimed at industrial-volume processing of hand-written documents for surveys, credit-card companies, etc. 

All the assignments in the box were done as a freelance consultant.

1994 Ericsson, Muscat (Oman)

Representing Ericsson to its Omani partners, GTO (the Omani Telecom company) and their consultants, DeTeCon (Deutsche Telekom Consultants). Responsibilities included liaison between the various departments of the ultimate client (GTO) and the various contractors involved. This entailed managing the efforts to specify the conversion of GTO's records from an old in-house IBM mainframe system to a new Oracle/AIX system. The project involved 5 companies, several different departments within GTO, and personnel from 9 different countries. 

1993 IBM Ireland, Dublin

Employed by IBM's services centre to provide all necessary support for Telecom Eireann's (since renamed EirCom) Financial Systems Division. The "BCA" project replaced all of Telecom's billing systems (except land based telephony) with a new integrated system (TIMS) from Teli Telecom (Later acquired by Ericsson Telecom Sweden).

1992 Computer Learning Centre, Dublin

Lectured on UNIX, C, and general software design. Clients included: AIB Bank, Motorola, Aer Rianta (Ireland's airports authority).

1992 UBS Philips & Drew, London

Assistant integration manager of a new Corporate Settlement Platform for Europe's largest broker. Work included surveying the application and user requirements, and formulating policies, with specific responsibilities for security, release control and printing. The environment was HP9000/800 & 700 machines, running ORACLE 6.

1991-92 Lotus Development (Ireland), Dublin

Created and led the technical team in a new UNIX centre Lotus was opening in Ireland. This was the first software development effort by any US-based corporation in Ireland. The team was charged with porting Lotus 1-2-3 from SUN workstations to HP (300/400 and 700/800) DECStations (MIPS) IBM (RS/6000) and PC/UNIX (SCO, Interactive, SVR4, etc.).
Internationally, assisted Lotus, Sun & YHP (Hewlett Packard's joint venture in Japan) in adding Japanese and Korean language support to Lotus 1-2-3, and in performance issues. 

The work involved extremely tight schedules (the first HP port was ready 1 week after the final model SUN product), requiring rigorous control over source (SCCS), the multi-vendor network (TCP/IP), and system administration (8 different variants of UNIX). During the team-leading role all projects completed on or before time and on or below budget.

1990 Quadratron (UK), Sheffield

Employed as a front-line consultant to a major client (HM Department of Employment, Sheffield) to coordinate support for all office automation products, and to design a printing subsystem for the TFS project, involving 80 sites, with 1200 end users.

1989-90 Seashell, Dublin

Fee-earning consultant. Assignments included the specification, authoring and presentation of an intermediate & high level UNIX course for ICL training services. The course became part of the official training suite. Work with Seashell included also the Prototyping of an ISAM product.

1988-89 Software Laboratories, Dublin

Employed as a UNIX expert with the following responsibilities: Systems administration (12 machines of 6 different vendors), Security, Networks, Version control, Configuration control, Staff training in C and UNIX, Advising management regarding UNIX's capabilities, Initial design of new products and product extensions.

1985-88 Gould CSD (Israel), Tel-Aviv

Concurrently with military service, employed as part time consultant on UNIX issues. These included in-house system management, pre-sales support and training.

1984-87 Military Service, Israel

National service with the Israel Air Force included the following assignments:

- Participation in a team charged with the maintenance of a critical multi-mainframe online fault tolerant system, running CICS over DOS/VSE and OS/VSl on IBM hardware. Personal responsibilities included the planning of recovery procedures in the event of massive hardware failure, and general systems support.

- Involvement with development of a manpower administration system for the Air Force using ORACLE in a VAX/VMS environment.

- Other non-computer-related roles.

1980-84 Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Part time work in the Computer Science department, concurrent with high-school. The first 2 years were spent setting up the first full-scale Computer Vision Laboratory in Israel. 

The third and last year was spent on setting up NOISE (Network Of Israel's Science & Education), which was Israel's USENET, and first international Email link.

Responsibilities throughout the three years included handling daily support issues arising from a user base of approximately 300 students & faculty staff, with over 10 machines running 5 different versions of UNIX.

Education:

1972-84 Various Schools in Scotland & Israel.

1982-84 Concurrently with high-school education, the first year of a Computer Science course was completed with the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

1993-96 BA, Philosophy & Comparative religion, specializing in Christianity & Indian culture, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Currently - MA in Cognitive Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Languages:

Hebrew, English - Native speaker.

Italian - Conversant.

German, French, Arabic, Sanskrit - Student.

Birth Date:

June 3rd, 1966.