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posted 12/04/07 by Lisa Crounse Developer Spotlight: Kevin O'Mahoney

Software infrastructure may not sound glamourous, but its really really really important. Our team is now lucky enough to have someone who is dedicated to making sure that the application build and release process goes as smmothly as possible. He's the newest member of the team, Kevin O'Mahoney. We're all very glad that he's here.

Q: Who are you and why are you here?
A: I am one of the newest members to the Impression team. I joined Autodesk in March 2007 after ridding the roller coaster that is the Silicon Valley startup industry. I started my engineering career doing schematic drafting, red/blue line physical-tape circuit board layout design (if anyone remembers what that was like!), and prototype wire wrapping circuit boards. I’ve designed hardware (I designed one of the first parallel printer card modules for the IBM PC Jr while at QuadRAM Corp, and I was one of the original PowerMac engineers at Apple), I’ve written software (I led and developed MacTestPro, the first shrink-wrap product to ship from Apple based on object-oriented programming, and wrote several boot ROMs for Apple and SGI), I’ve worked for and managed at some great startups (Apple cloner PowerComputing, Kerbango, CoSine, SGI), and managed and ran factories and manufacturing sites (PowerComputing, IronPort). I had driven past the Autodesk buildings for a couple years but it took a friend who worked here to give me the final nudge to join.

Q: What is your position?
A: I am fortunate to be again doing what I really enjoy, development engineering. I currently work on support and infrastructure aspects of the Impression project, specifically the application build and release process and the installer. If I do my job well no one would notice, but should I have a head-gap error (as in the gap between the ears) then everyone notices.

Q: What do you do during an average day, or do you even have such a thing?
A: Average days involve watching the build servers out of the corner of my eye while working on code or scripts preparing for the next release.

Q: What has been the best part of working on Impression?
A: I joined a team of incredibly talented people, from the development and quality engineers to the project management and marketing folks. The best part is working with and learning from all of them. This project was in development for several years so there are lots of moments when I “get” the code or designs that were intelligently developed before I joined the effort.

Q: What keeps you busy outside of Autodesk?
A: I love spending time with my daughter and being karmicly reminded of all the things I did that drove my mother crazy. I spent time over the past two years on the committee that hosted the Binary Being Symposium on the UC Berkeley campus. And time freed up from it being over will now be consumed as I joined the school board of the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. They say space abhors a vacuum and I extend it to say adult life abhors free time.

Kevin and his daughter at the zoo!

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