Brian Kneebone
Career
Senior Developer Support Architect,
Contractual Solutions Quality
Print Hardware Systems Quality
HP Inc.
November 2021 – Present
Consults with HP’s largest third party technology partners if needed beyond standard support motions. Often this results in making recommendations for leveraging HP’s Software Development Kits (SDKs) and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in ways they may not have considered. Implements improvements and for cloud applications, services and extensions into Zendesk(tm) and if needed guiding contracted full stack web developers for additional scale. Consults and advises with contracted developer support agents as the technology lead for the team.
Project Manager (Master),
Global Engineering Services & Integrations
Print Hardware Systems Quality
HP Inc.
November 2015 – November 2022
Proactively identifies, sizes, and either directly resolves or partners with others to prioritize and resolve product and related quality interests affecting HP itself, its customers and its partners. Primary scope includes initial deployment and ongoing management of large device fleets, their firmware and configured state including internal and extended configurations and any related solutions state. Expertise includes system integration evaluation and sometimes implementation with third party asset management, configuration management, access & identity management and incident management platforms. Periodically develops customizations or prototypes or assist others on their projects as needed.
Responsibilities with this current engineering services & integrations master level role include:
- Drive on proactive and data-driven product and related quality improvements and support/mentor experts towards this direction as well.
- Develop deeper partnerships internally with product marketing and R&D including at the director and distinguished technologist levels.
- Build or foster internal community formation for related goals.
Examples of HP Security Manager and related quality improvements:
- Discovered, tracked and measured demand for new certificate/registration authorities for policy or cloud hosting reasons as trends changed for enterprises with certificate provisioning use cases.
- Researched and reached out directly to third party certificate authority and policy management vendors to investigate and evaluate proprietary and standard interface options.
- Partnered with product marketing and R&D to develop an internal interface to develop trusted plugins for certificate provisioning automation adaptation.
- Assisted product marketing, tech marketing and R&D as they developed standard protocol connectors including SCEP and others to come for certificate provisioning improvement.
- Partnered with product marketing and followed-up with interested third party certificate authority and policy management vendors to explore future co-branding / shared value opportunities.
- Discovered related quality interests and worked with delivery, tech marketing and R&D to resolve with a special focus on those that impeded certificate provisioning automation.
Examples of HP firmware, HP Web Jetadmin and other platform and related quality improvements:
- Worked with marketing, tech marketing and R&D to enable new firmware update mechanisms and software tool improvements to support cloud and improved deployment/manageability use cases.
- Worked with marketing, tech marketing and R&D as they develop next-generation firmware, cloud and client software platforms to design for optimized outcomes and avoid (re-)creating problems with special focus on automatic updates, resets, initial setup, etc.
- Assisted other tech marketing or support experts as needed for their various projects and initiatives with special focus on health/diagnostics and automation.
Examples of customization and prototyping used generally by various internal teams globally or for specific customers or partners:
- Developed and maintained an offline feature licensing ecosystem including on-premise tool (ASP.NET + SQL) to perform licensing and client software (.Net Form / GUI) which handled new requests and response handing including (de-)activation of features.
- Developed a customized certificate provisioning HP Security Manager plugin (.Net) for a large global financial services client which was using proprietary microservices.
- Developed a device management SDK prototype (.Net CLIs/DLLs, documentation & examples) as a customization for a large global manufacturing client which may be used for their proprietary device management framework.
- Refactored an existing customization (.Net CLI) for improved readability and OAuth support for a large global financial services client which required improvements for data to be exchanged between HP Web Jetadmin and their preferred asset management platform.
- Developed a number of simple tools and code samples for use internally by other quality, R&D, delivery or pre-sales teams.
- Consulted with the sales response and R&D customization teams to help them evaluate customizations as they took over including helping with requirements clarity, code samples, referrals to others, etc.
Other examples:
- Helped global and regional service delivery teams with various complex HP and non-HP system integration needs either in presales, support or enhancement/customization contexts.
- Intervened where directed for conflict resolution on select global executive escalations, often these are very heated discussions with multiple millions of dollars at risk for HP and or its partners as well.
- Mentored and chaired a new global technical community developed around deployment, manageability & connectivity interests forming because of changes from on-premise to cloud, modern IT (zero trust), work-from-home, etc.
Project Manager (Expert),
Global Sales Response & Complex Deployments
LaserJet Enterprise Solutions
Hewlett-Packard
January 2011 – November 2015
Evaluated and unblocked technical inhibitors where feasible on multi-million dollar sales opportunities or planned deployments worldwide. Enhanced standard delivery with internal technical account management for with complex deployments on specific accounts. Enhanced standard support on executive escalations and those escalations that spanned multiple assets and support teams.
Sales response specific responsibilities included helping regional or global sales teams unblock new multi-million dollar opportunities or planned product and managed print service deployments including:
- Researching and/or testing for additional information not provided in test or specifications working with R&D and tech marketing.
- Evaluate, negotiate, plan, execute and test firmware and software enhancements where required for customer requirements working with marketing and R&D.
- Identify and track trends for requests in aggregate where deals may be to small to explore individually or the request too large to fulfill in one phase.
Complex deployment responsibilities included helping delivery and support teams for their large named global clients or select executive and multi-asset escalations including:
- Compliment delivery, support, tech marketing and R&D where needed (e.g. multiple-assets involved, often third parties as well, issues difficult to reproduce, etc.).
- Partner with internal, partner and customer teams including delivery, support, tech marketing and R&D to resolve conflicts.
- Run or participate on SWATs and war rooms where needed for issues that require broader planning or longer delivery timelines often partnering with delivery, support and R&D.
- Help system testing, tech marketing and R&D on close-the-loop investigations (retrospectives) to assure tests are adapted and learnings (re-)captured.
While performing the sales response duties, directly unblocked approximately $450M USD in blocked sales (and indirectly helped another $2.5B USD helping team members). While performing complex deployment responsibilities, enhanced support for an already planned $600M USD in delivered products and services.
Technology Consultant, Delivery
Canadian Sales/Delivery
Hewlett-Packard
November 2009 – January 2011
Installed imaging and printing devices and both HP and third party software. Trained system administrators, service personnel and end users. Performed technical account management functions as needed. Periodically planned new hardware deployments as needed for customers and resellers.
Technology Consultant, Pre-sales
Canadian Sales/Delivery
Hewlett-Packard
February 2004 – November 2009
Consulted with named accounts including some of Canada’s largest financial services, insurance, manufacturing and healthcare industries head quartered out of Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Assisted sales representatives on technical any of their technical presales needs or customers and resellers on topics ranging from printing, scanning, faxing, copying, document capture and automation, security, accounting, etc. Performed technical account management functions as needed for customers and resellers.
Inside Sales Representative
Sitel Sales Contact Centre
Compaq (Sitel) -> Hewlett-Packard (Sitel)
May 2002 – February 2004
Worked under contract via Sitel. Supported account managers and territory sales representatives as their inside sales representative and worked as a direct contact for smaller customers across Western Canada. Represented Compaq and Hewlett-Packard’s merged product lines for desktops, notebooks, handhelds, servers, storage as well as imaging and printing devices.
Reseller Sales Consultant
Sitel Sales Contact Centre
Compaq (Sitel)
August 2000 – May 2002
Worked under contract via Sitel. Supported authorized resellers with pre-sales technical questions ranging from PC’s, Notebooks, Handhelds, Servers and Storage.
Education
Computer Science Courses
Carleton University
1994 – 1996
Took object oriented programming courses for Java, C++ & SmallTalk as well as some calculus and physics.
Languages
English (Expert)
French (Intermediate/Certified)