I’ve been tinkering with electronics since I was a kid. I was at Radio Shack every week to buy parts or more solder to build projects.
Some of my skills I’ve built up over several decades the industry:
Digital Electronics Design
C and Python Programming
Rapid prototyping, debug & bench skills
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Microcontroller and Embedded System Design
Power Management ICs
RF Experience
Strong Communication Skills
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Work History
After university, I went to work for a number of companies. In reverse chronological order:
EdgeX, San Diego, Sr. Staff Electrical Engineer, 2024 - Present
- Electronic circuit design in KiCAD for IoT sensors (temp, humidity, air pressure, current loop, etc), LTE modem, LORA radio, Bluetooth beacons, etc.
- Designed 3D printed enclosures and functiona test fixtures in OpenSCAD.
- Designed programmers and functional testers for IoT PCBAs
- design tester circuits, probe fixtures, wrote Python code running on Linux PC or Raspberry Pi for automated testers.
Brain Corporation, San Diego, Sr. Engineer/Technical Lead Mgr - Electrical, 2020 - 2024
- Debugged and fixed difficult system issues such as voltage spikes causing Ethernet issues, randomly damaged compute modules, random CPU reboots.
- Provide technical guidance and design reviews for manufacturers designing custom electronics for Brain Corp such as compute systems, sensors and motor controllers.
- Lead and mentor a small team of engineers to run bench experiments, debug faults, deploy fixes to the field, and write technical reports and system documentation for customers.
Shield AI, San Diego, Sr Staff Engineer - Electrical - Software Test, 2019 - 2020
- Lead the tester design for the power, CPU and radio circuit boards of an autonomous flying robot
- Wrote test specifications for PCBA functional testers. Worked with an EMS to build the testers.
- Worked with firmware and manufacturing engineers to specify test modes and system commands
Brain Corporation, San Diego, Hardware Automated Test Engineer, 2018 - 2019
- Took over development of an automated tester for a motor+sensor board
- Added new features to a complex Python test program
- Designed a DC and resistance tester for a CPU board.
- Used Python on Raspberry Pi to control lab instruments and an LCD display via USB
- Designed a custom bed-of-nails board in Altium.
Sigma Designs, San Diego, Senior Staff Test Engineer, 2017 - 2018
- Designed and built a battery characterization system using Raspberry Pi + PIC MCU to measure the voltage, capacity and ESR of 100 batteries simultaneously.
- Wrote tools to analyze and plot battery performance.
- Wrote a simulator to predict device battery life.
Qualcomm, San Diego, Test Automation HW, Senior Staff Engineer, 2014 - 2017
- Designed a PC-controlled USB charger to emulate many USB charger types with programmable voltage/current/ESR
- Custom USB MCU to control SMPS ICs, DACs, ADCs, I2C+SPI, and LCD
- Designed a Rechargeable Battery Emulator which emulated any phone battery at any charge condition and temperature
- Featured a 2-quadrant SMPS, 10 Amp charge/ discharge; programmable Randles Battery Model with ESR. Custom USB interface.
- Wrote firmware in C using cooperative multi-tasking and state machine design
- Wrote a PC app in Python as an event-driven PyQt GUI to control the emulator board
Qualcomm, San Diego, Windows PMIC Driver Test Lead, Staff Engineer, 2012 - 2014
- Lead a team of 6 engineers (3 in India) to develop Windows test automation SW and HW
- Oversaw Microsoft TAEF test development to test the PMIC kernel driver on target
- Wrote Python to control phones and equipment as a foundation for team to build on
- Wrote log parsers, report generators, plot generators and bench instrument libraries
Qualcomm, San Diego, Windows PMIC Driver, Staff Engineer, 2011 - 2012
- Wrote the battery gauging driver as part of the PMIC driver team for Windows phone
- Systems lead for PMIC driver team for SMPS charger, GPIO, interrupts, LED and Vregs
Qualcomm, San Diego, PMIC Customer Applications, Staff Engineer, 2008 - 2011
- Trained customers, wrote docs on PMIC topics, board-level debug on customer phones
- Designed PMIC eval boards using Microchip PIC/MPLAB X and Visual Basic PC app
- Designed SSBI and SPMI bus master HW using a Xilinx CPLD and Xilinx ISE in Verilog to control the eval boards
Qualcomm, San Diego, PMIC Systems, Senior Engineer, 2002 - 2004
- Collaborated with IC design and phone engineers to define specs and functionality for a PMIC
- buck SMPS and LDO, power sequencing, GPIO, real-time clock, USB battery charger
- Wrote clear system documentation of function and specs which guided the design team
Qualcomm, San Diego, ASIC Product Engineer, Senior Engineer, 1996 - 2002
- Performed statistical analysis and yield analysis on test data
- Review test fixture designs and test methods
- Helped design test fixtures. Deployed test at overseas customer test sites.
TCI/BR Communications, Sunnyvale, CA, RF+Analog Design Engineer, 1994 - 1996
- Designed shortwave radio equipment for spectrum monitoring and over-the-horizon radar
- Designed a shortwave wideband radio transmitter exciter with FSK modulator
- Simulated designs in LTSpice. Did layout of critical RF sections and impedance-controlled traces.
- Used a network analyzer, spectrum analyzers and signal generators to measure frequency response, impedance matching, LO leakage, IMD and IIP3 specs.