Kirk Freiheit

Principal Engineer at Microsoft

Orlando, Florida, United States

About

Engineering leader recognized for customer-focused innovation and collaboration through all phases of the software development process. Track record of success designing, building and shipping multiple releases of usable software enjoyed by millions of people globally. Awarded nine U.S. patents for innovative user interface and software process designs. Technical specialties include React, Typescript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Web Accessibility, C/C++, C#, PowerShell, UI/UX design, WPF, web service design, git/git-flow, unit testing, Python, Ruby, CI/CD pipeline design, Docker, Jenkins, AWS cloud, Puppet, Linux and Windows administration.

Experience

  • Microsoft (Full-time · 6 yrs 10 mos)
    • Principal Software Engineer
      Nov 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 8 mos

    • Principal Engineering Manager
      Sep 2022 - Nov 2023 · 1 yr 3 mos

    • Senior Software Engineering Manager
      Sep 2020 - Sep 2022 · 2 yrs 1 mo

  • Google Earth Enterprise Developer at Thermopylae Sciences + Technology
    Apr 2018 - Aug 2019 · 1 yr 5 mos

    Full-stack software engineer working on new features and maintenance of Google Earth Enterprise, the recently open sourced version of Google Earth used by government and private enterprise customers.

  • Senior Principal Software Engineer at Veritas Technologies LLC
    2015 - Dec 2017 · 3 yrs

    Agile DevOps engineer enabling globally distributed team of 80 engineers to build a new product "Veritas Velocity" from inception to AWS cloud delivery - Established infrastructure-as-code techniques and artifacts to build consistent virtualized development and deployment platform across sites - Engineered CI/CD pipeline with commit and acceptance stages - Oversaw multiple production deployments of Veritas Velocity to AWS, built custom tools for monitoring complicated orchestration process - Spearheaded adoption of Docker, transforming CI/CD to leverage "Jenkins Pipeline" code-based workflow, enabling creation of component pipelines - Streamlined deployment by containerizing application and simplifying orchestration code, enabling delivery of on-premises of Velocity - Mentored three colleagues through the patent application process, all three were awarded patents

  • Senior Principal Software Engineer at Symantec
    2007 - 2015 · 8 yrs

    Lead globally distributed UI team spanning multiple releases of Backup Exec, the #1 Windows Server backup product in the world - Redesigned backup job workflow to visualize stages of backup, and focus options on resource types being backed up - Transformed restore job workflow to be tailored for each resource type, greatly simplifying the user experience - Guided design of new PowerShell-based scripting interface (BEMCLI) to align with backup and restore workflow redesign - Overhauled server interface to dramatically reduce need for validation logic - Promoted BEMCLI by speaking at 2014 PowerShell Summit and as featured guest on episode 198 of the PowerScripting Podcast

  • Software Development Engineer 2 at Microsoft
    Aug 2006 - Aug 2007 · 1 yr 1 mo

    Designed and developed new user interface components for Windows Server following the release of Vista and PowerShell 1.0. - Created prototype graphical user interface for PowerShell, and persuaded the PowerShell leadership team to officially support its development - Accelerated development by securing code editor from the Visual Studio team - Developed initial prototype of the "PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE)", which shipped in Windows Server 2008 R2