Steven Platt, PhD

Hi, I'm Steven, but you can call me telecomsteve.

I am a full stack engineer, researcher, and mentor holding both an MBA and engineering PhD. I have 15 years of total engineering experience, with 6 years in scripting languages (Python and Javascript), and 2 years in Product and Engineering Management.

LinkedIn GitHub

Education

PhD. Blockchain Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain, 2018-2021
M.S. Wireless Communications, Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering, Barcelona, Spain, 2017-2018
MBA. Business Administration, Illinois State University, Normal, US, 2009-2012
B.S. Electronic Systems Technology, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, US, 2004-2007

Experience

O(1)Labs

Senior Infrastructure Engineer, San Francisco, US, 2021-current

Designed and built stress testing infrastructure to validate network consensus safety and the scaling limits of total user counts and block synchronization (bootstrap) within the Mina blockchain and protocol.
Successfully identified and triaged two severity 0 (network-halting) bugs as part of internal validation ahead of protocol upgrades.
Led the automation and rollout of "testnet", "mainnet", and "hard fork" network infrastructures using Terraform, Helm, and Google Kubernetes Engine.

Pompeu Fabra University

Doctoral Researcher, Barcelona, Spain, 2018-2021

Thesis: "Towards Generalized Blockchain Enabled Cellular Overlays".
Wrote and taught the smart contract programming curriculum for a new "Blockchain Technologies" course focused on the Ethereum blockchain and Solidity programming language.
Published research at top ranked journals and conferences including MDPI Journal Sensors (SJR Q1) and IEEE GlobeCom.

Yoptio

Founder, San Francisco, US, 2016-2018

Hired and managed an outsourced development team consisting of an account manager and three developers located in the United States and India.
Built an MVP for a receptionist-as-a-service platform, supporting number ordering, dynamic call routing, and voice message transcription.

Twitter.com

Systems Engineer II, San Francisco, US, 2014-2017

Managed infrastructure deployments on 5 continents including DNS, server virtualization, and storage arrays.
Migrated monolith VoIP infrastructure to a service-oriented design, reducing voice carrier costs globally 72%.
Reduced site delivery time from 12 weeks to 2 by transitioning ISDN cricuits to internet peering using SIP.
Mentored and trained support engineers as company headcount expanded 100% in 2 years.

Salesforce.com

Network Engineer, San Francisco, US, 2012-2014

Principle network deployment engineer; completed network deployment for facilities in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.
Global support for Cisco LAN, WAN, Wireless and VPN, Juniper firewall, and F5 Load Balancer systems.

Caterpillar Inc

IT Analyst II, Peoria, US, 2007-2012

Engineering lead for Enterprise Video technology and services.
Completed platform design and field trials of new satellite connected "field view" industrial camera to enable remote machine support with deployments in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States.

Open Source Contributions

mina, 2021-current
gnome-shell, 2020

Languages and Tools

Python, Go, Javascript, Bash, YAML, HCL, Solidity, SQL
Linux, AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Puppet, Terraform, Engineering Management