Jason Lu An Chen

Engineer, Entrepreneur, Investor, Father.


Bio

  • Origin: Born in Taiwan, Grew up in Canada, Made in US
  • Location: Newark, CA
  • Age: 39
  • Langs: English, Mandarin Chinese (Traditional)
  • Job: Engineer, Investor, Entrepreneur, Father.
  • Goal: Enrich Life

The Present

I'm currently NOT looking for work, but always open to discuss new and interesting opportunities.


Projects

I'm constantly working on multiple projects simultaneously, so make sure to check out my Projects page.


Skill Assessment


Core Competencies

o o o o
Business Strategy

Strategic Planning - Organizational Strategic Initiatives

    Notable Examples
  • China Strategy
  • Turnkey Strategy
  • Security Strategy
  • NFC (Payment) Strategy
  • P2P/AllJoyn (vs. iBeacon, Bluetooth LE)

Operation Management: Strategic Initiative for "Strategic Realignment Plan"

o o o o
Product Management

Product & Roadmap Planning

    Notable Examples
  • FillTable
  • Qualcomm Value-Add Software (vs. Competitions)
  • Qualcomm Advance Software Technologies (vs. Competitions): Speech Recognition, Fluence Noise-Cancellation, Camera(Optizoom, Chromaflash, Ubifocus, Low-Light Enhancement, Object Removal, Object Cloning), Security(SecureMSM, Enterprise Security (MDM), Antivirus, Payment, Secure APIs), Vuforia/FastCV, Gesture

Technical Marketing

    Notable Examples
  • Snapdragon, MSM7k processors
  • Modem (power/performance)
  • Windows RT (power/performance)
  • Nintendo

o o o o o
Technical Competitive Analysis & Strategy

Landscape, Technology, Roadmap, Cost & Pricing

Expert in Competitive Analysis and Strategy. Analysis include: Competitive Landscape, Finance, Technology Portfolio, Roadmap, Cost, Ecosystem, and Benchmarking. Strategy and Tactical Actions include: Roadmap Strategy, Competitive Pricing, Selling Guides, Technology Investments, Partnerships, and Acquisitions.

  • M&A
    • GestureTek
    • Atheros
  • Partnerships
    • Thundersoft - To address application gap
    • Bsquare - For custom design gap
    • Dolby - For OEM/white label branding
    • NXP - For NFC solution gap
  • Technology Investments
    • Security - for differentiation
      • Secure Element
      • Payment
      • Enterprise (MDM)
      • Antivirus
    • Gesture - acquisition
    • NFC - acquisition
    • P2P - sell
    • Multicore CPU Design - for differentiation
    • Heterogeneous Compute - for differentiation
    • Optional SW: Noise Cancallation - for revenue/profit
    • Optional SW: Camera - for revenue/profit
  • New Business Segments
    • PC
    • Wearable (Android Wear/Google Glass)
    • M2M/IoT/IoE
    • Server

o o o o o
Technical Project Management

Managed all phases of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Effective in Planning, Monitoring, and Controlling. Skilled in Managing Expectations and Maintaining Client-Relationships. Expert in Conflict Resolution and Risk Management. Completed PMP and CMMi training.

    Notable Examples
  • FillTable
  • Unitech Industrial Device
  • Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp
  • Tiger Team Projects: HP/Foxconn, HTC, Sony, LG...

o o o o
Engineering Management

Proven engineering leader, held several Engineering Lead roles. Experienced in Team Building, Coaching, Collaboration, and Delegation. Effective in Trade-off Decision Making, Communication, and Problem Solving. Customer-Facing. Creative and Influential across organizations. Strong Technical Expertise and follows Software Engineering Best Practices.

    Notable Examples
  • Qualcomm Strategy: Led Multiple teams for Modem performance and power benchmarking
  • Qualcomm Strategy: Led Multiple teams for Windows RT Benchmarking
  • Qualcomm Engineering: Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, led Multiple (internal, customers, partner) teams
  • Qualcomm Engineering: As Tiger team, led Multiple internal cross-functional teams and customer teams to address urgent issues
  • Bsquare: Led a team of engineers to develop 2 windows mobile projects

Management Style: “people, process, principle, servant, leader, advocate, rewards, motivates and foster teamwork”

o o o o o
Product Development

Extensive mobile application development experience on Android, iOS, and Windows (Phone/Mobile/CE/Embedded)

    Notable Examples
  • FillTable
  • gpsOne, an E911 app / middleware, that is used in more than 300 million smartphones

Experienced in building highly scalable Cloud Services. Practiced Agile and Devops

    Notable Example
  • FillTable

Exceptional technical expertise in Smartphone Development and Embedded System Integration, especially in system architecture, performance optimization, and power management


Mobile Apps

o o o o
iOS

Swift

o o o o
Android

Java

o o o o
Windows Universal

C/C++/C#/JavaScript

o o o o
Windows Phone

C/C++/C#


Web Apps

o o o o
ASP.NET Core

JavaScript/C#/Razor/HTML5/CSS

o o o o
Microsoft Azure Services

App (web/mobile) services, Traffic Manager, Identity Provider, Application Insights, Notification Hub, Blob Storage/SQL database, Azure Functions and Azure Backup

o o o o
Blazor
o o o o
React
o o o o
Bootstrap

3, 4


Note: While I am experienced in cgi-bin, php, python (Django/Tornado), Angular, node.js, I am by no means expert in any of them.


PC/ Embedded System / Smartphone

o o o o o
System Architecture

Extensive experience on System Architecture, Design Review, Device Bring-up, Cross-Functional Debugging, and Power Management

  • Architecture: x86 and ARM
  • Chipsets: Qualcomm (7k, Snapdragon), Marvell (Intel PXA), Intel, AMD. Experienced with TI OMAP, Samsung SC/Exynos, Nvidia Tegra, MTK, and Intel Atom as well
  • OS: Windows Mobile/Windows Phone, Windows RT, Windows, Windows Embedded, Windows CE, Android, Brew, Symbian

o o o o o
Power Management

World-class expert in Power Management: MP-DCVS, Sleep, Clkrgm, ISR/IST , PMIC, Battery, down to individual components. Experienced in ACPI and APM

o o o o o
Device Drivers

Wrote 14 device drivers: Eboot, IPL (OMA DM/FOTA), Memory, GPIO, Serial (UART), i2c, GPS, Barcode Scanner, DCVS, Battery, Keypad, Remkeys, Backlight, and Notification LED.

Integrated/Modified: Interrupt, Timer, PCMCIA, USB, SDIO, RNDIS, RPC MUX, TAI, Display, Touch Panel, Camera, Audio, Bluetooth, and WLAN

o o o o o
Kernel
  • Windows CE
  • Windows Mobile
  • Windows Phone

Programming Language

o o o o
C/C++
o o o o
JavaScript
o o o o
C#
o o o o
Swift
o o o o
Java

Weapon of Choice

    OS
    • Windows
    • Mac OSX
    • Others: Chromebuntu
    IDE
    • Visual Studio/Visual Studio Code
    • Xcode
    • Android Studio
    • Unity
    • Others: Eclipse, UltraEdit, TextEdit, Notepad, Pico…
    Source Control/CICD
    • Git
    • Visual Studios Team Service
    • Older: Subversion, Perforce
    Other Debugging
    • Fiddler
    • Lauterbach Trace32 (JTAG)
    • SQLite Manager (FireFox extension)
    • Chrome, FireFox, Edge
    • Beyond Compare
    • Diagnostic Logs, Trace logs, Kernel logs,… serial port dump, led light
    • cmd, console, Kudu
    Content
    • Office Suites (Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Word, Outlook, Sway, Visio, SharePoint)
    • Paint/Paint.net/Paint 3D, Photoshop, Inkscape, GIMP
    • Garage Band, Audacity
    • Movie Maker, iMovie

The Past

    Earlier Life
    • Ex-hacker, Network Administrator, Security Consultant to National Research Council of Canada (NRC)
    • Web Developer, Teacher (JavaScript), Technical Consultant (C#/ASP.NET)
    • Public Relations Officer (RISC, Microsoft Consulting at University of Toronto)
    The last ~15 years (Since 2003)

    Have been working in the Technology Industry (PC, Embedded, Smartphone, Mobile/Web Apps) as BIOS Engineer, System Integrator, Kernel Engineer, and Mobile (Android/iOS/Windows)/Web Application Developer. I have also spent 5 years in Corporate Strategy, focused on Technical Competitive Analysis and Strategy. I am experienced in M&A, Operations, Product Management, Technical Project Management, Technical Marketing/Sales, Technical Partnerships, Customer Engineering, Technical Talks/Presentations, Tradeshow PR and Event Planning. Extensive experience with 3rd party requirements, such as FDA regulations on medical devices, Carrier Technical Acceptance (TA), Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), and Windows Hardware Certification (LTK/CETK, WHQL). Oversea working experience.

    FillTable

    In late 2015, I created my own company (FillTable, LLC)


Previous Employers

    Abbott Medical Optics, Inc (now Johnson & Johnson Vision)

    Senior Quality Assurance Consultant to R&D and Quality Assurance teams. Provided Software architecture and System design reviews. Completed Abbott’s training regarding to FDA regulations on medical devices.

    Qualcomm Inc.

    Staff Engineer (Business Strategy & Analysis). Strategy and Technical Advisor to Senior Executives, accountable for software strategy, competitive analysis, technology analysis, growth, and strategic initiatives. Senior Competitive Product Manager role for competitors’ Value-Add Software (VAS) and Advance Software Technologies for Snapdragon Chipsets. Collaborated with product managers, program managers, and engineering teams for strategies and roadmaps to highlight differentiations and close gaps. Additionally, worked with M&A and Legal for 3rd party partnerships. Led up to 7 engineering teams for competitive analysis. Managed multiple projects, ranging from competitive analysis, to building internal tools.

    • Led technical analysis projects for new technologies and new markets: resulting in over 10 new technology investments, 4 new business segments, and 2 acquisitions
    • Developed use cases and functional specifications to support development of product definitions: resulting in 12 commercial chipset products
    • Recommended marketing strategy and wrote selling guides used for technical marketing: leading to over 10 key design wins
    • Established competitive analysis process: leading to 4 partnerships and 6 organizational strategic initiatives
    • Formed competitive benchmarking process for modem and Windows computing devices. Led projects to develop benchmarking tools. Managed all modem and Windows performance analysis projects between 2010-2015: resulting in competitive data used by executives, finance, sales, marketing, engineering, and investor relationships
    • Managed projects and worked with teams for our customers: resulting several internal services with over 3000 subscribers

    Senior Software Engineer (Customer Engineering). Leading customer-facing technical staff, expert in system architecture, kernel, device drivers, and power management. Charged with design consultation and technical marketing. Drove requirements, change requests, and feature requests. Managed multiple complex projects that involves internal teams, external OS partners, and customers. As Technical Account Manager, managed up to 13 customer projects concurrently, including 9 onsite and 4 remote projects, and oversaw multiple supporting engineering teams across multiple time zones to provide 24-hours development updates. Directed up to 6 technology teams, resolving cross-functional technical issues. Published over 20 documentations. Taught over 18 customer training sessions, involving over 20 customers. Led in chipset commercialization, resulted in 6 commercial chipset launches.

    • Directed smartphone product development ranging from design review, gap analysis, software development, device bring-up, to passing carrier Technical Acceptance (TA): resulting in over 25 smartphone commercial launches
    • Managed projects including resource planning, status reporting, cross-functional triage, cross-departmental collaboration, negotiating and managing deliverables: leading to recognition by customer senior executives as principle point of contact
    • Led Windows Phone 7 bootcamp: leading a collaboration between Qualcomm, Microsoft and 9 customers

    Bsquare Corp.

    Senior Consultant / Senior Software Engineer. Interdisciplinary consultant to Qualcomm as system architect, commercialized first smartphones using Qualcomm chipsets. System integration lead, accountable for product development, specializing in kernel and device drivers. Designed mobile applications on Windows Mobile/Windows CE. Practiced PMP principles.

    • Managed 3 projects across all phases, from statement of work (SOW) to completion phase: exceeding customer expectations, while yielding additional 15-20% margin for the projects
    • Developed board-support-package (BSP) for industrial / military-grade mobile devices: completing 31 Windows Mobile / CE device drivers such as power management and Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA); winning awards from Microsoft
    • Architected gpsOne application and middleware: resulting E911 Emergency Locator used in more than 300 million smartphones
    • Designed Memory Leak Detector: resolving multi-million-dollar industrial application issue

    Compal Electronics, Inc.

    System BIOS Design Engineer at world’s 2nd largest laptop ODM. Led risk reduction process with Six Sigma and Information Security Management System. Supervised factory operations in China.

    • Developed Phoenix BIOS for 8 notebook computer product lines, specializing in power management (ACPI) and security
    • Designed source control process and automation tools
    • Implemented tools to optimize manufacturing process

    Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

    Network Administrator for class B, government network

    • Deployed internal fiber infrastructure
    • Deployed DHCP across the organization

Education

    B.A.Sc. University of Toronto, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering Specialist option
    • Activities and Societies: Microsoft Consulting, IEEE, ECE Club, Professional Engineers Ontario, Microsoft Devhood
    Trainings
    • FDA Regulation on Medical Device Training - Abbott Medical Optics
    • Business Acumen - Stanford Business School
    • PMP Certification Training
    • Six Sigma Training
    • CMMi Training
    • Information Security Management System (BS7799/ISO27001)
    • Intel EFI Training
    Certification
    • Certified CSS Phoenix BIOS Engineer

Awards

    Microsoft MVP
    • Devhood
    National Mathematics Contests
    • Gauss
    • Pascal
    • Cayley
    • Fermat
    • Euclid
    • Descartes

Life

I am an explorer, a philosopher, an engineer, a walking contradiction dictated by logics.

I’m rather versatile in a number of sports. My favorites are: Snowblading, Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Basketball, Biking, Dance, and Driving. I follow F1, Hockey, and Basketball. I enjoy Indie, Jazz and Trance music. I play Chinese Flute (Dizi), Classical Guitar, and Ukulele. I am into museum, art, and architecture. I am a movie buff and appreciate plays. I enjoy nature and camping. I love to travel and the culture experiences. Most of all, I love food. It’s my guilty pleasure.


Obsessions

While I have the tendency to quickly adopt a new interest, my true obsession is my thirst to learn, think, and do. I have moved away from obsessing over material goods to prefer knowledge and life experiences. Then again, I am obsessed about food… On a serious note, I often find myself reading about law, medicine, science, history, economy and finance (stocks).


Other Interests

    Sports
    • Favorite Sports: Badminton, Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, Skiing and Snowblading
    • Played competitive sports in Tennis, Badminton and Track-and-field (100m sprint, 4x100m relay, long jump, high jump)
    Musical Instruments
    • Chinese Flute (Dizi)
    • Keyboard
    • Recorder
    • Trombone
    • Guitar (Classical)
    • Ukulele
    Competitive Gaming
    • Go
    • Chess
    • Contract Bridge
    • Magic: The Gathering
    Video Games
    • Real-Time Strategy: Dune, Command & Conqueror, Warcraft, Starcraft
    • Strategy: Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone
    • FPS: Wolfenstein, Quake, Call of Duty
    • Open World: GTA5

Interesting Facts

    Comedian
    • Performed as a standup comedian
    Scouts
    • Was in Cub and Venture scouts
    Ladders
    • Won several world ladders in competitive video gaming, particularly in Command & Conqueror: Red alert, Command & Conqueror: Red alert 2, and Command & Conqueror: Sole Survivor. Also placed in top ranks in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft