What's your day job?

[Legator91]

I am a engineer at GM. I was a seat Validation Engineer. I planned, performed, and documented all of the testing needed to meet federal safety requirements.

I have just moved to the Advanced Vehicle Development group at GM (Component Intergration Design Engineer). My role there is to work between design and engineering. In a nutshell I take the crazy cool designs that the studio comes up with, and turn them into somthing that meets requirments and is manufacturable.

FIRST is definitely the reason I went into engineering. Working with the mentors on 67 (HOT) as a kid really inspired me. I also got lucky enough to get hired by GM, so now I get to mentor my old team.

[BSV]

Meteorologist. I lead a research group that uses remote sensing (mostly weather radar, but also geostationary satellites and other things like lightning detection arrays) to study severe thunderstorms, tornados, hail, and the like to improve warnings of those threats to the public(s). So it's a combination of physics, CS, machine learning, social science, and a grab bag of other things.

Based on what I see from the students that apply for our jobs and work for us, if you are looking at a science career and are really good at coding up your ideas then you will go far. There is a severe lack of computing talent in the sciences.

[Chris is me]

I'm a Manufacturing Engineer at QuEST Global Services, working as an outsourcer for Pratt and Whitney. Currently I provide support and programming help for robotic automated inspection machines, which is a task I was able to get thanks to my FIRST Robotics experience. I also work on manufacturing cost estimation models for a wide variety of engine parts.

FIRST, combined with some college classes, gave me almost all of the manufacturing knowledge I had prior to starting this job, and it was immensely helpful when I was starting out.

[zcohen]

I'm a high school technology and engineering teacher. I teach Project Lead the Way Aerospace Engineering and Introduction to Engineering Design, plus I wrote the curriculum for and teach a class called intro to robotics engineering and technology of flight.
Its not always as cool as the jobs other here have, but I would never change it for anything else. Its far more enjoyable than any other career I've had and I hope I have the energy to do it for quite a few more years.

[barn34]

I have a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bradley University. My graduate thesis work was done in partnership with Caterpillar and focused on object detection and collision warning using automotive RADAR sensors for Motor Graders performing snow removal applications. I was also the graduate assistant for all the robotics classes, and ran the robotics lab.

Professionally, I've been working in machine research for Caterpillar for going on 11 years now - 3 as a graduate student for my thesis work, 8 as a full-time engineer. I now lead various research projects in Automation & Enterprise Solutions.

This is my 8th season as a Roboteers mentor.

[jvriezen]

I'm a software engineer/product architect working on data replication/high availability software for 'backend' commercial data systems (IBM i, specifically). The primary language I work in is C.

[Monochron]

I was previously a software engineer at NetApp, working on enterprise data replication and data recovery in the OnTap operating system. We managed data movement and backup across clustered storage setups, mostly SAN. It was primarily C and C++ programming with some perl and expect scripting thrown in occasionally.

I left NetApp recently though and am currently looking for other employment, hopefully with more of a focus on hardware or robotics. If anyone knows of any good openings in the RTP, NC area, let me know!

[z_beeblebrox]

High school student here, but I'm an intern at Steward Observatory Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of Arizona, working on developing inflatable space-based and balloon-borne terahertz telescopes for mapping cold galactic gas. I've worked there since last summer, when I got to design and build a camera system for attitude determination of a high-altitude balloon (out of laser-cut plywood of course) that flew on a NASA balloon in September.

[nighterfighter]

Currently in college, but I am an intern in the Information Technology department for a medical group in the metro Atlanta area, with 5 major hospitals and lots of urgent care centers and specialist centers.

I actually work in an office though, researching software solutions as well as writing code/scripts that assist the main program that our nurses/doctors/surgeons/etc use when interacting with patients, to ensure accuracy of medication.

I've been rotating languages between some SQL, C#, VBA, AutoIt Scripting Language, and whatever random things I need to do for the job.

It might sound boring, especially compared to the cool things that some people here do, but making sure that the information about patients is both accurate (and secure) is important also.

[RoboDawg]

Signal Inspector, BNSF Railway, Kootenai river subdivision (northern Idaho and northwest Montana. 10th year of mentoring (tenure?).