Resume

I like to introduce and think about myself as a programmer. And I am one, for sure, but what really drives me is solving problems, be it the one-byte-in-a-billion data corruption kind, understanding why a workload is performing worse than expected or building infrastructure and operation team skills needed to deploy Arm powered servers in HPC environment.

Expertise

• Arm architecture (and microarchitectural details of several implementations, particularly related to performance analysis)
• Programming (particularly operating system level in C and assembly, but speak half a dozen other languages)
• Problem solving a.k.a. debugging... (long record of tracking down and fixing hard to reproduce bugs in software and hardware)
• ... wherever computing happens (worked with smallest of microcontrollers, deployed Arm-powered servers in HPC clusters and pretty much everything in between)
• Driving technical change (learned - the hard way - the art of "negotiation" with indifferent - in the best scenario - teams and communities)
• Legal and community-related aspects of Open Source software (IANAL, but I learned how to speak to them :-)
• Public speaking (despite being a self-confessed geek, I actually like doing this and scooped an award or two on the way)

Professional Experience

Distinguished Engineer

Arm, Central Engineering - Production Engineering Group, Cambridge, UK, March 2022 - February 2025

• Achieved a breakthrough of a new data center built with more Arm compute than x86. Finally got past the invisible 50% barrier!
• After many years with AWS Graviton2/3/4 systems, we worked with Azure and GCP launching their Arm powered platforms - Cobalt and Axion. They all rock :-)
• Of course success always brings challenges, so spent quite some time chasing "interesting issues" both at software and hardware level. Great new war stories to tell...
• Proudly handed over benchmarking methodology to more junior members of our little team - they are now much better then me at it.
• Got invited to a small group of Social Intrapreneurs working closely with our Sustainability Team on "tech4good" projects. It's a bit of a guerilla warfare, to be honest, but very rewarding one!

Senior Principal Engineer

Arm, Central Engineering - Production Engineering Group, Cambridge, UK, October 2019 - March 2022

• Continuing the "Arm engineering on Arm" mission...
• ... finally getting production cycles on aarch64! Now we're running at scale, both on-prem and in the cloud.
• Worked with AWS' Graviton2 systems before the public announcement (and it was a wild ride! :-)
• Consulted many wonderful issues experienced by our Partners porting their tools (but only a few of them were really related to AArch64 ;-)
• Our team became a "go-to" destination for benchmarking new compute platforms. Perhaps because of all the battle scars we're proudly carrying now...

Principal Engineer

Arm, Technical Solutions Group, Cambridge, UK, October 2016 - September 2019

• Technical lead and driver of the "Arm engineering on Arm" programme, aiming to make widely defined Arm engineering use Arm technology.
• Planned and delivered AArch64 compute in Arm’s European data centre (15% of total capacity) based on the Comanche (ThunderX2 powered) servers, working closely with representatives of HPE, Cavium, AMI and US national labs to bring the project from prototype stage to production.
• Built infrastructure to handle Arm-powered machines in Arm IT estate, working with networking, platforms, applications, infrastructure and enterprise teams.
• Built direct engineering relations with two major EDA vendors and other, smaller, ISVs, helping with porting their software to AArch64.
• Evangelised the Arm on Arm programme at two Arm Global Engineering Conferences, scooping the "Best Talk" prize on the way.
• Delivered three generations of Arm-powered workstations to various teams at DSG, CE-OSS and Enterprise IT.
• Helped countless teams at Arm, from bioinformatics research, to ML software, to HPC tools with problems or at least access to Arm-powered platforms.

Principal Engineer

Arm, Development Solutions Group, Cambridge, UK, January 2014 – October 2016

• Member of the Advanced Product Development team.
• Research areas:
  • processor performance analysis (including microarchitectural analysis),
  • interconnect performance,
  • feedback driven optimisation,
  • tracing solutions,
  • cycle accurate modelling parallelisation,
  • power modelling.
• Influenced group strategy by regular APD updates to the management.
• Advocated and then personally involved in creating two Open Source tooling related job positions in the group.
• Co-creator and the "strongest voice" of the "develop for Arm on Arm" idea, particularly articulating the need for an Arm engineering workstation.

Linux Internals Development Lead

Arm, Systems Design Division, Cambridge, UK, July 2010 – December 2013

• Was responsible for pretty much all Linux-related activities in the division, through the whole product portfolio.
• Became an Open Source evangelist and got involved in legal aspects of using Open Source as 3rd Party IP.
• Advocated automated approach to Open Source licence compliance process (long before it became trendy!)
• Maintained Versatile Express support in Linux kernel, making it the first Device Tree "powered" platform in the main line.
• Worked on bringing up new VE processor boards, fixing hardware problems on the way.
• Proposed and prototyped use of Virtio in Arm Fast Models (in place of a custom, semi-proprietary solution) and in result had to co-edit the OASIS Virtio 1.0 specification document.
• Seconded to the Research group to investigate state transfer between modelling environments (particularly Arm Fast Models and gem5).
• Promoted use of standard interfaces (for example perf) in developer tools like Arm Development Studio and Streamline.
• Worked with different groups at Linaro since its inception, with knowledge, skills and services going both ways.

Software Design Senior Engineer

STMicroelectronics (R&D) Ltd., Bristol, UK, July 2007 - June 2010

• Involved in development & maintenance of Linux kernel, particularly SH-4 architecture & STM-specific device drivers
• Responsible for bring-up and Linux kernel support on new SOCs, using emulation platforms (Palladium, Veloce) and from day 1 of the silicon (proud to have STi7108 package with number “1” penciled on it, amongst other “artifacts” in my collection).
• Debugged numerous “interesting” hardware defects, from missing reference voltage at GPIO pads ring to spurious DMA pacing signals generated by audio input cell.
• “Tamed” and worked with the lead SOC micro-architect on making the designs (particularly glue logic) more software friendly.
• Proposed and implemented major “vendor kernel” BSP refactorization.
• Designed and implemented ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) subsystem for STM SOCs, later ported to OS21
• Participated in STLinux distribution development and maintenance.

Engineer

Advanced Digital Broadcast Polska & Osmosys Technologies, Katowice, Poland, November 2004 - July 2007

• Participated in a number of MHP interactive STB projects based on STMicroelectronics processors.
• Responsible for hardware abstraction layer test environment development & maintenance.
• Member of a first out a kind, portable DVR (Digital Video Recording) solution development team.
• Responsible for a hardware platform bring up & low-level software development leading engineer in a Broadcom BCM7401/2-based OCAP 2.0 (Tru2Way) Set-Top Box project.
• Member of the "TOP 10 Employees" group in 2006.

Education

Institute Catholique d'Arts et Métiers

Nantes, France, 2004

• Socrates/Erasmus students program
• 6 months at Labo Automatique
• Member of a 5 students team
• Working on a final project (new automotive products demonstration model) for Atmel Corporation.

Silesian University of Technology

Gliwice, Poland, 1999 - 2004

• MSc (Eng.) in Computer Science.
• Databases, Networks and Computer Systems.
• An award in FIAT competition for the best automotive-related diploma thesis.

Silesian Technical College

Katowice, Poland 1994 - 1999

• Electronics.
• Graduated with distinction.
• As the final project built campus-wide computer network with a 1Mbps Frame Relay internet uplink (the first of its kind in any school in Poland!)

Volunteering

STEM Education

• Mentored local school teams in EDT's Go4SET and EES programmes.
• Regularly talked to students at work experience days organized by Uptree.
• Staffed (as a judge, FI/FTA and CSA) 2 national finals and 1 Cambridge qualification of First Tech Challange robotic competitions.

Technology for good

• Worked for 2 years with Simprints and helped them to grow from “no people, no money, no product” stage to a working prototype, a $250.000 Gates Foundation grant and two first hires moment!
• Represented Arm engineering at a field trip to Kenya with Unicef Innovation Lab.
• Remotely mentored refugees in Africa working towards becoming freelancer developers through Na'amal.