About Kristof Provost

Software Engineer (Freelance)

Netgate (Rubicon Communications)
February 2021 - now

  • pf maintenance
  • upstreaming Netgate code into FreeBSD
  • OpenVPN DCO kernel driver for FreeBSD

Software Engineer (Freelance)

Axiado, San Jose, CA
April 2019 - November 2020

Bringup of FreeBSD on a new RISC-V SoC, driver development and general debugging.

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

Silex Inside, Louvain-La-Neuve
November 2015 - January 2018

  • Embedded development on HDMI to IP devices. (Linux, Yocto, C++, Qt)
  • Specifications, architecture, implementation and testing.

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

SoftAtHome, Wijgmaal
April 2014 - September 2015

  • Focus on WiFi Access Point functunality of a home gateway product.
  • General network stack and kernel level bug fixing and support, focusing on QoS, bridging, IGMP and IPv6.

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

Barco, Liège
April 2013 - June 2014

Embedded development on a digital cinema device. (Linux, Qt, C++)

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

AW Europe, Braine-l'Alleud
November 2012 - April 2013

Advanced development team. Integration of a third-party navigation component into the existing code base. (Linux, Qt, C++)

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

Euresys, Angleur
July 2012 - September 2012

Fixed-term contract to put the finishing touches to an ONVIF video surveillance device. ONVIF is a SOAP based standard for IP based physical security products.

Embedded Software Engineer (Freelance)

SoftAtHome, Wijgmaal
January 2011 - July 2012

  • Integration of vendor board support packages into the existing DSL home gateway software to enable new hardware support.
  • Software integration of a WiFi offload solution on the gateway.
  • Integration and configuration of the vendor QoS implementation with the existing QoS framework.
  • General network stack and kernel level bug fixing and support, focusing on QoS, bridging, IGMP and IPv6.

Embedded software engineer

Scientific Atlanta (Cisco), Kortrijk
November 2007 - January 2011

Development work on D9900 (Digital Content Manager). DCM is a "head-end in a box" device. It is a high density MPEG multiplexer with advanced features such as scrambling, transrating, splicing and transcoding. It consists of multiple PowerPC (and ARM) processors which coordinate multiple FPGAs responsible for the routing and processing of MPEG/DVB/ATSC data. All processors run Linux and communicate over an internal IP network.

  • Specification of new features based on customer requests.
  • Design of new features and enhancements, producing UML class and sequence diagrams.
  • Development of multi-threaded C++ code for a Montavista Linux PowerPC platform
  • Regression tests for new features and bug fixes (Python)
  • Improvements and enhancements to the regression test framework
  • Design, implementation and testing of new SNMP MIBs. Maintenance and improvement of the SNMP agent
  • Improvements of the GNU Make and Autotools based build system resulting in a halving of the build times.

Build manager

Thomson Telecom (now Technicolor), Edegem
September 2004 - October 2007

Support of the xDSL home gateway development team. The Technicolor gateways (formerly SpeedTouch) are ADSL(2+)/VDSL/SDSL/... gateway devices for consumers and small businesses. Many of the devices supported advanced features like IPSec, or VOIP (H232/SIP/MGCP). Low-end devices are based on the RTEMS operating system while some of the high end devices were based on Linux (custom build based around busybox and uClibc).

  • Responsible for the reproducible and timely delivery of firmware builds for up to 20 different hardware platforms, with up to three software versions for some platforms.
  • Re-implemented and significantly extended internal website (Java servlets/JSP, with a MySQL back-end database) to track software changes and released builds. It was eventually extended to track the results of automated regression tests and the evolution of memory and flash usage.
  • Assist developers with the ClearCase version control system, assist the off-site administration team.
  • Migrated bug tracking system from ClearDDTS to ClearQuest.
  • Support and enhancement of the build environment (based on ClearMake and the GNU toolchain)
  • Upgraded gcc toolchain for RTEMS systems, resulting in a significant reduction of the binary size (allowing more features in low-cost platforms).