Career
This page summarizes significant points in my career. I also have a PDF copy of my résumé available, which is more formal.
Appareo, October 2021 to present
Appareo is an embedded systems engineering company located in Fargo. Their two main focuses are aircraft telemetry platforms and ruggedized agricultural systems. I was hired as an embedded systems engineer for their aviation department in October of 2021.
When I started at Appareo, I became the primary embedded software developer for our team’s flagship product, a flight data recorder enables aircraft fleet owners to ensure safe operations by their pilots. My role has primarily focused on Linux application development using C++ and Python and integrating applications using Yocto and systemd. I’ve also gained experience writing C for the nRF9160-based cellular processor on the device, implementing a major feature whereby flight data can be automatically uploaded to our cloud product for review by fleet owners.
Besides growing my skills in writing and integrating software, I’ve also gained experience in the design of software and systems. I’ve witnessed firsthand the difficulty of working with an excessively-microserviced architecture, inheriting a codebase where too much separation made feature work difficult. I worked with ZMQ and Protobuf between applications as well as between the flight data recorder’s main processor and cellular processor. I worked closely with our cloud product’s team to design and integrate the cellular upload feature of our flight data recorder with our cloud product.
Working on a small, close-knit team has also given me many opportunities beyond embedded development. Throughout 2023 I took a key role in the migration of our cloud product to a new set of AWS EC2 instances and upgraded and modernized our Ansible deployement scripts. I continue to help in the maintenance of our deployment and management of the system, including setting up and managing a Zabbix instance to allow us to monitor our cloud product for outages. I also upgraded and consolidated highly aged Jenkins instances, modifying and patching CI jobs as needed. My system administration hobby and past work has been a big help to the team in managing our build and cloud infrastructure.
My electrical engineering background has proven useful numerous times, particularly when our team provides wiring and integration support to customers. I’ve also used an oscilloscope when developing and debugging an integration between our flight data recorder and another of our products, a robust data storage module. My knowledge of oscilloscopes was also useful when our team had to perform RF measurements prior to our product undergoing certification for its cellular feature.
Voxtelesys, May 2020 to October 2021
Voxtelesys is a VoIP services provider located in Fargo, North Dakota. Their business, put simply, is providing internet phone related services. Most businesses in the last couple decades have started using internet-based phones, known as “VoIP” (Voice over IP) phones. This means that a company that previously would have had to run dozens of phone lines into their building can now route calls over a single internet connection, vastly simplifying their routing and increasing the number of “phone lines” they can provide their employees. It also makes moving employees throughout the building easier, as the phone can automatically know which calls it needs to receive regardless of where it is in the building.
When routing calls over the internet, there are several pieces of technology that all have to work together to allow internet-based phone traffic to communicate with the standard phone network. Voxtelesys provides services to make that happen.
I started interning at Voxtelesys in May of 2020. In September of 2020, I was hired on as a full-time developer. Most of the time, I worked with the OpenSIPS scripting language, Golang/Go, or C. In this position, I got to use a Linux-based OS full time, which I was extremely pleased about.
JDES, March 2018 to May 2020
John Deere Electronic Solutions, abbreviated JDES, is the division of John Deere (Deere & Co.) responsible for developing electronic components for John Deere’s products. They also do work for other manufacturers upon request. I interned at JDES in Fargo starting in March of 2018. While there, I gained valuable real-world experience on what it is like to work in the Electronic Design department of a major electrical engineering group. I have learned how to apply theory to real-world circuits, while also developing lab skills to match. Following a real engineer throughout his troubleshooting procedure has shown me how actual design problems are diagnosed and repaired in a lab. My experiences at JDES developed in me the kinds of skills, intuition, and understanding that cannot be substituted for in a classroom.
In March of 2019, I was rotated from the Electronic Design department to the Software department. In the Software department, I learned Python (including the process for converting from Python 2 to 3) as well as gained experience using collaborative software tools. I also gained experience managing and troubleshooting Jenkins for testing software on real-world automated test setups. Not coming from a software background, I acquired a large amount of new software related skills and experience in a very short time.
I maintained my position at John Deere until May of 2020, at which point I left to intern at Voxtelesys in Fargo.