A Work In Progress...
My portfolio, a product of my skills and experience, is always a work in progress. I am accustomed to independently researching topics relating to my work, and am able to learn new systems, software, and technology in minimal time.
I always endeavor to be an expert in my field.
Work Experience
Embedded Engineering Manager: Apollo America, Auburn Hills MI
Manages electronics and firmware engineers in product development team. Responsible for personnel including hiring, performance, and training. Assigns work and manages projects including reporting status to upper management. Trains and coaches team members for both technical design skills and personal development. Develops processes and champions best practices including development of engineering release and change processes. Writes capital requests for equipment and manages contract designers.
Technical expert for smoke detection algorithms and RF transceiver design. Facilitated team meetings. Led efforts to implement bug tracking and shared data through JIRA and Confluence.
(October 2016 - Present)
Design Engineer: Apollo America, Auburn Hills MI
Designed fire detection components including smoke detectors, notification appliances, control panel components, battery backup, wireless sensors, and protocol simulation. Responsible for full hardware design including circuit design, component selection, PCB layout, and embedded firmware. Products were designed to meet applicable UL standards for NFPA 72.
Provided technical mentoring for engineers and professional mentoring for an employee in operations. Championed process improvements including version control of engineering documents and standard design libraries.
(July 2012 - September 2016)
Engineer: RH Systems, Albuquerque NM
Partnered with MBW Calibration in Switzerland, RH Systems make the most accurate chilled mirror hygrometers in the world. These products are the standard for inter-laboratory comparisons of humidity measurements. Customers include nearly every national humidity calibration lab (NIST in the US).
Design work includes precision analog circuits for measurement, embedded processor hardware and software, PCB layout, control systems, and PC applications. Designed, built, and tuned process control systems for temperature, pressure, flow, and fluid levels. Designed mechanical and electrical refrigeration systems for precise low temperature control.
Key successes include:
- Implemented bug fixes and updates on every product in current production.
- Detected and fixed a bug in the C compiler that was causing random crashes in a large custom calibration system.
- Developed business cases and product specifications for products currently in development.
Design Engineer I, Design Engineer II: Veris Industries, Portland, OR
Performed design, testing, troubleshooting of new and existing products in Environmental Sensors business unit.
Designs involved product specifications, analog and digital hardware, firmware in C and assembly, parts selection, schematic capture and simulation, enclosure design, and manufacturing process. Most designs involved 8-bit microcontrollers, analog peripherals, switching power supplies, and interfacing to various resistive, capacitive and digital sensors. Processors used includes AVR, 8051 Variants, MSP430, and PIC.
Responsible for troubleshooting and updating existing designs, cost improvements, manufacturing improvements, and testing and analysis of technologies and end product. Duties include test set design using commercial and custom hardware, test set software using: C, C++, Perl, shell scripts, MySQL, scripts in Octave and Gnuplot, and small amounts of Lua, Flex, and XML. Responsible for supporting products and test sets, including documentation and troubleshooting.
Involved in customer support, inventory management, and various business cost/benefit decisions. Administrated and supported MySQL server for tracking product information, version control using Subversion, and PHP web pages for providing statistics from database.
Assisted other engineers with hardware and software troubleshooting as needed. Resident expert in Linux programming, embedded microcontroller software and interfacing, temperature and humidity sensing. Acted as leader or co-leader for most projects. Performed duties of engineering manager when he was absent.
Key successes include:
- Redesigned CO2 platform to reduce parts cost and labor cost, reduce manufacturing time, improve performance, and improve user interface.
- Designed economy CO2, humidity, and temperature sensors for low cost markets.
- Modified legacy products to meet current specifications.
- Researched and implemented state of the art technologies and methods for use in future products.
- Outfitted metrology lab and designed lab procedures and quality system.
- Led development of software coding standard to improve software quality and maintainability.
Information Services Intern : The Sabine Mining Company, Hallsville, TX
Assisted in computer hardware and software upgrading and maintenance. Produced MySQL based data logging software and a web based MySQL query utility. (Summer 2001, 1/03 - 4/03)
Research Assistant : LeTourneau University Adhesives Research Group, Longview, TX
Produced web site to display published articles. Assisted in design and implementation of a processor controlled environmental chamber. (6/01 - 10/01)
Contract Laborer : Rose City Sound and Lighting, Portland, OR
Performed set up, tear down, and some operation of large-scale lighting and sound systems. (Summer 1999)
Web Design Contractor : Medi-Mech Corporation, The Dalles, OR
Constructed company web site. (Fall 1998)
Computer Aid : U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Dalles Dam
Performed hardware and software upgrading and troubleshooting. Assisted in network administration, server testing. (9/97 - 9/98)
Engineering Draftsman : U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Dalles Dam
Updated redline drawings, scanned, handled print requests. Organized project-drawing archives. (5/97 - 9/97)