Niel Viljoen
Chief Executive Officer
Niel Viljoen has been active in the computing and networking equipment industry for the past 20 years. Primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome on a full-time basis in July 2003, Niel was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira.
Between 2000 and 2001, Niel was CTO of the Marconi group. Niel joined Marconi after the acquisition of FORE Systems, where he was part of the management team. At FORE, Niel's roles included Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Division, Senior Vice President Product Marketing, Vice President Engineering, Senior Director and General Manager of the Adapter group. Niel joined FORE through the acquisition of Nemesys Ltd, where he was the CEO. Nemesys developed a range of video encoding devices for broadband networks. Prior to that, Niel developed and created a number of businesses, developing products like network security devices and large distributed memory processor complexes.
Niel has received a number of industry awards. He attended the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Cambridge University in the UK.
Gavin Stark
Chief Technology Officer
Gavin Stark has been designing high speed communications systems for over 20 years covering all aspects from applications down to silicon implementation. At Netronome he is now developing his seventh generation of network processing architecture.
Gavin completed his PhD while working for his first startup, Virata, which went public in 1999. While designing Virata's first system-on-a-chip, he began working with Cirrus Logic. He became the architect for Cirrus Logic's communications silicon division. This division spun off to become Basis Communications and Gavin was the Chief Technical Officer.
In 2000 – upon completion of the design of its first silicon – Basis was acquired by Intel Corporation. In the Network Processor Group at Intel, Gavin was chiefly responsible for the architecture of the IXP4XX family and the IXP23XX family, working with customers and design teams spread across the globe. Gavin joined Netronome in 2006.
Gavin holds both an MA and a PhD from Cambridge University, England. Gavin holds several patents in areas including packet processing algorithms and network processor architecture.
Jim Finnegan
Senior Vice President, Silicon Engineering
Jim Finnegan has over 20 years of senior management experience in the networks and communications business. His career has included extended periods based in Ireland, the UK and Santa Clara, CA, where he now resides.
Jim has had a career-long commitment to the development of an engineering culture that expects first-pass success using disciplined software and silicon development methodologies. This focus has most recently been demonstrated in Intel Corporation where he oversaw the development of Intel’s entire portfolio of network processors, several of which went into production in first-pass silicon. Jim began his career at Miles-33 in the UK and subsequently worked in senior engineering and management positions with Digital Equipment Corporation, Tellabs and Racal Data Group. Following Racal, he built the engineering organization at Basis Communications and was a key member of the executive team that negotiated the acquisition of Basis by Intel Corporation in 2000. At Intel, Jim became General Manager of both the Network Processor Division and the Communication Infrastructure Group’s Technology Office.
Jim has Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Electronic Engineering from The Queens University, Belfast.
Mike Benson
Senior Vice President, Platform Engineering
Mike has more than 20 years experience in the design and architecture of networking products for both service provider and enterprise networks. He has successfully led teams focused on advanced networking systems development and component design. His systems design experience includes hybrid ATM/Ethernet switches, packet over SONET products, network processors, ATM network interface cards, multiservice SONET-based transport products and cellular infrastructure equipment. His component design experience includes 10+ ASICs in the areas of signal processing, bus interface designs including PCI, ATM SARs, network processors, queuing devices and other networking system ASICs.
Mike has held positions as director of engineering at Mangrove Systems, as founder of Inviscid Networks (a network processor startup), as both systems architect and director of hardware engineering at FORE Systems’ Broadband Routing and Switching Division, and as Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs (now Lucent). He was an early member of FORE Systems’ engineering team and was the first US-based employee of Netronome.
Mike holds several patents in the areas of packet networking and network interface card design and has presented at numerous industry events. Mike received an M.S. degree from Stanford University and graduated summa cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.
Johann Tönsing
Chief Architect & Senior Vice President, Software Engineering
Johann focuses on combining information and communications technologies to create innovative products that solve real-world needs. He has managed product engineering and marketing for large companies and all aspects of start-ups.
From 1999 to 2003, Johann was with Marconi Communications (USA), managing engineering for several products based on VoIP (SIP and H.323) and distributed control plane (GMPLS) technologies, and serving as business planner. Prior to that, he was active for eight years in the network and IT security field as lead engineer (chief architect), product marketing manager and independent consultant, amongst others, leading design of VPN, firewall and intrusion detection products for Nanoteq (South Africa).
Since 1985, Johann has founded or participated in a variety of business ventures. These created products that typically combined digital electronics, embedded software, communications hardware/software and distributed processing. He received M. Eng. (Electron.) and B. Eng. (Electron.) degrees (both cum laude) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Jarrod Siket
Senior Vice President & General Manager, Sales & Marketing
Jarrod brings 18 years of experience in the data and telecommunications industry to Netronome, including product management, strategic planning, sales, business development and executive management. In his current role, Jarrod is responsible for the sales, product management, product marketing and marketing communications for Netronome’s entire product line of network flow processors, network flow engine acceleration cards and flow management software.
Prior to joining Netronome, Jarrod spent two years as Vice President of Marketing at Tollgrade Communications, a leading supplier of hardware and software network and service assurance solutions for global telecommunications and cable broadband service providers that offer VoIP, IPTV and IP VPN services over Ethernet and IP networks. Jarrod also spent ten years at FORE Systems, subsequently acquired by Marconi Communications, as a senior director of product management and, later, strategic planning, where he directed the companies’ product planning and marketing efforts for Ethernet and IP solutions targeting enterprise networks, services providers and mission-critical government networks.
Jarrod has been an active participant in the evolution of the networking industry. He served for three terms (2000-2005) as the vice chairman of the IP/MPLS Forum technical committee; has been a regular featured speaker at industry events; served as an advisory board member for other companies and industry consortiums; and has authored numerous publications on Ethernet and IP product, technology, service and application trends in high-speed, next-generation networking.
Jarrod holds an MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh and a BS in Information and Decision Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.
LL Cheok
President, Asia-Pacific Operations
Lay Leng Cheok (LL) has over 20 years of business, R&D and senior management experience in the electronics industry. He was the President of Flexcomm Limited, a networking and communications system solutions developer with offices in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia. Prior to his tenure at Flexcomm, LL was General Manager of Asia Operations, Communications Infrastructure Group (CIG) at Intel Corporation, where he managed over $550M business with development centers across Asia, focusing on Intel IXA™ products and Embedded Intel Architecture platforms for the communications and embedded market segments. From 2003 to mid-2004, LL was also responsible for CIG’s Shannon Business Center, Ireland.
LL has worked as a design engineer for the Intel x86 microprocessors and MCS-51 microcontrollers, where he later co-led the development of Intel MCS®251 architectures. He was a member of the Intel team that developed USB v1.0 and a co-manager responsible for enabling worldwide peripheral vendors adopting USB technology. LL helped set up Intel Malaysia’s first chip design center in 1991 for microcontroller designs and initiated the second design center for low- and mid-range Intel IXP network processor design in 2003.
LL has degrees in Computer Technology & Electronics from University of Science Malaysia, where he also did post-graduate research in device physics. He attained an MBA from Nottingham Trent University, UK and holds one US patent related to USB technology.
Phil Compton
Senior Vice President, Finance
Phil Compton has more than 25 years of financial and operational experience, including senior management-level expertise in building the infrastructure and profitability of both emerging and established technology companies. He is responsible for the financial operations, funding and investor relations of the company.
Prior to joining Netronome, Phil served as CFO and Secretary for CoManage, a global provider of data integrity software solutions for telecomm service providers, where he was involved in raising nearly $60 million in venture funding and securing $10 million in debt financing. Prior to CoManage, he served as CFO for WiseWire, a developer of Internet search software, and was instrumental in coordinating its acquisition for $40 million by Lycos in 1998.
Phil began his career with the Big Four accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) and later joined Black Box Corporation (BBOX) as manager of accounting. He subsequently served as the VP of Finance and CFO for IRIS Technologies, a software development company providing touch-screen visual routing technology to the cable and telecommunications industries.
Phil is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a BS in Accounting from West Virginia University.
