Robert Kane

Background

About Robert Kane

In my most recent role, I was the Director of an electromechanical “hardware” design division for a contract manufacturing company. Working for me were engineers in electrical and mechanical hardware design, embedded and cloud software, project managers, and technicians. Most of the products designed have an Internet of Things (IOT) component, which overlaps with my long history in IT. In my nearly 10 years at Mars International, my team brought many products from requirements to production for numerous customers. A key point to be made is that most projects have been from existing customers, who have learned from earlier project performance that my team should be trusted for the next. I brought to Mars a process-based and goal-oriented structure. My methods fostered an environment that let the design engineers concentrate on what they do best, while the project managers and I handled the project accounting, reporting, and customer contact. All projects followed a waterfall project management style, as I feel that is best used for the type of work we did. However, I do also take a bit from the Agile method, within phases of the waterfall plan, the teams were required to have sprint-like short term goals. Prior to my time at Mars International, I worked for Western Union. The most challenging role that I held there was to lead an IT transition team as the company moved to an offshore outsourcing model for some of its core IT systems. The work involved oversight in documenting each subsystem, and then ensuring that the new team was able to show competency for that system. Before this transition, I’ve had manager and director level roles at a few different departments, at first in the loyalty program and then in the prepaid card payments program. Before my work at Mars and at Western Union, I had an extensive career as an independent contractor to Wall Street, Telecom, and companies in a few other areas of IT.