# Frank Hecker (@frankhecker.com)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/frankhecker.com
Headline: Retired
Location: Ellicott City, Maryland, US

## About

My main professional experience has been as a sales engineer doing pre-sales support for computer software and hardware companies (both established companies and startups), mostly in the Washington, D.C., area and targeting the Federal government market. Areas of expertise include Internet technology (clients and servers) including DDI (DNS/DHCP/IP Address Management) protocols and services, computer security, automation of server operations, and open source communities, licensing, and related issues.

I've had a parallel "career" as a contributor to the Mozilla project, starting from my time at Netscape. For several years I was a volunteer member of the "mozilla.org staff" group overseeing the project, and then worked for four years with the Mozilla Foundation. I also have a broader interest in the business and policy aspects of open source software and development processes.

I'm now retired and pursuing personal projects.

Specialties: Internet technology, computer security, pre-sales support, open source development and licensing, server operations

## Experience

- **Principal Sales Engineer at Infoblox** (2012 – 2026)
  Support sales to the U.S. Federal government market of Infoblox DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and other products enabling business agility through network automation.
- **Senior Sales Engineer at IronKey** (2009 – 2012)
  Provide pre-sales support for sales of IronKey's Trusted Access platform for securing online access to banking and other applications.
- **Director, Grants and Programs at Mozilla Foundation** (2006 – 2009)
  Was Director, Grants and Programs, for the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit organization supporting the Mozilla open source project (creator of the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, and other products).
  
  I joined the Mozilla Foundation after the spinoff of the Mozilla Corporation as a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary. At various times as part of my duties I managed Foundation financial and legal affairs in conjunction with our contract CFO and pro bono legal counsel, including organizational budgets, tax filings and related public disclosure reports, contracts, trademark and copyright filings, and software licensing issues. I created and managed an active program of grantmaking in support of Mozilla-related projects, including initiatives to support enhanced web accessibility for people with disabilities. I managed the Mozilla Education initiative to promote teaching of Mozilla technologies and practices in college and university courses. I managed Foundation conference and trade show appearances. Last but not least, I served as a public spokesperson for the Foundation where appropriate.
- **Sr Systems Engineer at Opsware Inc** (2002 – 2006)
  I provided pre-sales support for Opsware data center automation products, including the Opsware Server Automation System for server configuration management and the Opsware Network Automation System for network device configuration management. I worked with Opsware marketing and engineering groups to define and scope product requirements for the government market. I initiated and helped manage the initiative to evaluate Opsware SAS against the Common Criteria security standard.
- **Systems Engineering Manager at CollabNet** (2000 – 2002)
  I provided technical support of CollabNet sales in the eastern United States. I also helped provide CollabNet consulting services related to business strategies involving open source and "gated community" collaborative development, open source licensing, and management and governance issues for open source and "gated community" collaborative development projects.
  
  I was sales technical lead and consultant to Dresdner Kleinwort, a major European investment bank investing in an open source strategy for development of the openadaptor Java-based Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) toolkit, including creation of The Software Conservancy, an independent nonprofit organization to hold copyright to the source code and provide a legal framework for volunteer development. I also created the CollabNet training courses "Introduction to Open Source" and "Open Source Licensing and Beyond".
- **Systems Engineering Manager at Netscape** (1995 – 2000)
  I headed the pre-sales technical support team for the Netscape government group (later absorbed into AOL as part of the iPlanet joint initiative with Sun), managing four other SEs. I was sales technical lead for the Netscape/DoD worldwide site license (an 8-figure contract later taken over by Red Hat), the initiative to support FORTEZZA cryptographic capabilities in Netscape products, the Netscape Security Services (later Network Security Services) project, and Netscape's FIPS 140 validation effort, among others. Overall I was the technical lead in sales activities resulting in over $80M in revenue to Netscape.
  
  In other activities, I was a key contributor to Netscape's decision to release source code for Netscape Communicator, and helped initiate the AOL Government Guide project to provide an online portal for consumer/citizen access to government services. In 1998 I was appointed one of three Netscape Fellows, the highest recognition possible for technical personnel at Netscape.
- **Systems Engineering Manager at Visix** (1989 – 1990)
- **Staff Writer at Okazu** (2024 – present)
  Okazu is a news and review site for yuri/GL/lesbian media from Japan and other countries in East and Southeast Asia. I write occasional reviews of live-action yuri dramas from Thailand and elsewhere.

## Education

- **Centre College** — Bachelor of Science (BS), Applied Mathematics, Physics (1973 – 1977)

## Skills

- Operating Systems
- Enterprise Software
- Network Security
- Security
- Open Source
- Servers
- Data Center
- DNS
- Computer Security
- Pre-sales
- Network Architecture
- Start-ups
- Firewalls
- RedHat
- Linux
- Networking
- TCP/IP
- Information Security
- Cloud Computing
- Storage
- System Architecture
- SaaS
- Enterprise Architecture
- Hardware
- Management
- Solution Selling
- Virtualization
- VMware
- Apache
- High Availability
- Unix
- Software as a Service (SaaS)

## Certifications

- Getting and Cleaning Data — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/getdata)
- Exploratory Data Analysis — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/exdata)
- Reproducible Research — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/repdata)
- Statistical Inference — Coursera Verified Certificates (https://www.coursera.org/account/accomplishments/verify/R7QZLSC6U9)
- MEDDPICC Master Class — MEDDICC (https://learn.meddicc.com/certificates/vjrjt5leph)
- Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp 1 — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/biostats)
- The Data Scientist’s Toolbox — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/datascitoolbox)
- R Programming — Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog)
- Cloud Computing for the Digital Business — LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/certificates/2d8c47e1949231966ece751d3661b126008346424df065ce6ba0f4600973b19a)

## Publications

- That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura’s Sweet Blue Flowers — Self-published (https://frankhecker.com/that-type-of-girl/)
- Dividing Howard: A History of County County Redistricting in Howard County, Maryland — Self-published (https://frankhecker.com/dividing-howard/)
- Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software — IEEE Software (https://frankhecker.com/writings/setting-up-shop-short/)
- Proceedings of the Fourth Annual L5 Space Development Conference — Univelt, Inc. (https://www.univelt.com/univeltpubs/astronautics/nssisdc.htm)

## Volunteering

- mozilla.org staff member at Mozilla

## Honors and awards

- Washington's Tech Titans — Washington Magazine
- Harry J. Murphy Catalyst Award — University of Wisconsin Trace Center

## Languages

- English (native)

## Other profiles

- website: https://frankhecker.com/
- twitter: https://x.com/hecker