Environmental testing, compliance engineering, and hardware problem-solving.
CSWP-certified Mechanical Engineer with 8+ years at Cisco Systems. Technical lead for GR-1089, AC156, and Marine standards — building the tools, fixtures, and methodologies that qualify hardware and uncover how it fails.
About
Mechanical engineer with roots in the Bay Area and a career built on hardware.
Grew up in the Bay Area and headed to Boston for a Mechanical Engineering degree at Northeastern University — where the opportunity to complete 3 co-ops at Apple, NxStage Medical, and Johnson & Johnson shaped a foundation across consumer electronics, medical devices, and quality engineering before graduating in 2017.
After graduating, moved back to the Bay Area and joined Cisco Systems as a Hardware Engineer. Over 8+ years, built and owned the environmental test lab, qualifying routers, switches, and gateways for major telecom providers through multiple industry compliance standards. Along the way, developed a habit of solving problems beyond the job description: custom test fixtures, AI-assisted lab tools, and full-stack applications running on a self-hosted home server.
Off the clock — die-hard Bay Area sports fan (Warriors, Giants, 49ers), avid sports card collector who built a custom full-stack inventory system to keep track of it all, and always on the hunt for the next sneaker pickup.
Bay Area Roots
Born and raised in the Bay Area. Lives in San Carlos, CA.
Northeastern University
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, 2017. Co-ops at Apple, NxStage Medical, and Johnson & Johnson.
Self-Hosted Everything
Runs a home Proxmox server with Docker-deployed apps for personal projects and tools.
Cards & Sneakers
Sports card collector with a custom-built inventory app. Sneaker enthusiast — always tracking the next drop.
Resume
8+ years qualifying hardware, building test infrastructure, and solving problems from bench to software.
Professional Experience
- Owned GR-1089 and GR-63 compliance testing at Cisco over 8+ years, executing 8–10 qualification projects annually and applying critical setup and interpretation decisions to qualify hardware for major telecom provider deployments, directly enabling millions of dollars in enterprise sales.
- Served as technical lead for GR-1089 and Marine standards, participating in GR-1089 industry standards meetings and providing formal and hands-on training to 3 engineers. Spearheaded the lab's expansion into AC156 seismic certification through collaboration with third-party vibration specialists to develop compliant test profiles.
- Developed custom vibration MDVT profiles using accelerometer-captured motion data to isolate critical frequencies, displacement thresholds, and resonance outputs across Cisco's router, switch, and gateway lines. Developed separate custom thermal profiles targeting temperature and altitude conditions to support failure analysis and de-risk products ahead of qualification.
- Designed custom SolidWorks adapter plates for hydraulic shaker tables and managed external fabrication, enabling accurate and repeatable server rack mounting across multiple compliance standards with adaptability for evolving test requirements.
- Developed a full-stack internal lab tool using AI-assisted rapid development, integrating a front-end test logging interface with a SQLite backend and automated Word report generation. Standardized test data capture across a 4-engineer team, saving 20+ hours weekly and providing first-time visibility into chamber and shaker table utilization.
- Maintained test-ready lab operations across 4 hydraulic shaker tables and multiple thermal chambers through scheduled PM and hands-on electrical fault diagnosis, minimizing downtime and keeping compliance projects on schedule.
- Analyzed new and sustaining product manufacturing data using JMP to identify quality trends across display supplier lines, generating summaries and reports for internal engineering teams and external consumption.
- Performed component-level failure analysis on returned iPhone field units through systematic teardowns and board-level isolation techniques, identifying recurring defect trends to inform corrective action.
- Collaborated with in-region Asian quality teams providing weekly product quality updates and communicating findings across global manufacturing operations.
- Created management reports documenting top display supplier quality issues, translating complex data findings into clear executive-level summaries.
- Designed and built a custom Instron test fixture to deliver repeatable force measurements on medical device components, documenting test methodology and validating hardware against ISO and ASTM standards.
- Performed new product validation across disposable medical device components, analyzing test data using Minitab statistics and graphs to verify performance against product documentation and industry standards.
- Designed and implemented an improved product packaging system enabling 20% more product per box, directly reducing packaging and shipping costs.
- Executed quality practices including Non-Conforming Material Reports (NCMR) to document and track out-of-spec components through the quality system.
- Improved quality engineering workflows by automating bi-daily reports through custom Excel macros, increasing Pareto chart processing efficiency and implementing a structured document management process within the PLM system.
- Validated and documented proprietary manufacturing tools following quality processes and tensile testing standards to ensure compliance with internal specifications.
- Identified process inefficiencies through time study analysis of the Non-Conformance return process, implementing both a label printing system and a barcoding solution to address human fatigue factors and deliver $1,500 in annual company savings.
Educational Background
Capstone Prototype Lead: Designed and built a passive airflow-driven louver system, characterizing CFM performance via anemometer measurements and engineering a custom gear assembly in SolidWorks to convert airflow energy into mechanical louver actuation, with components fabricated using 3D printing and acrylic.
Skills
Portfolio
A selection of engineering projects spanning hardware design, test methodology, and software development.
Environmental Test Lab
Designed a full hole-pattern seismic adapter plate across 4 shaker tables and developed custom MDVT profiles to recreate real-world hardware failures in the lab.
Environmental Lab Management Tool
Full-stack internal lab tool built with AI-assisted development — standardizing test logging, automating Word report generation, and tracking chamber and shaker table utilization.
Capstone: Airflow Louver System
Designed and built a passive mechanical louver system powered solely by airflow energy, with a custom 82:1 gear assembly fabricated via 3D printing.
Instron Test Fixture Design
Designed and built a custom test fixture for Instron force measurement on medical device components, validating against ISO and ASTM standards.
iPhone Display Failure Analysis
Performed component-level failure analysis on field-returned iPhones and manufacturing data analysis across multiple display suppliers using JMP and Excel.
Quality Engineering & Automation
Automated bi-daily Pareto chart reporting via Excel VBA macros and performed validation testing on ultrasonic welders for the Neuro Surgical Patty line.
Sports Card Inventory App
Full-stack Docker application self-hosted on Proxmox with barcode scanning, third-party API integration, and a dynamic database for managing a high-volume sports card collection.
Environmental Test Lab
Designed a 48"×48" custom adapter plate in SolidWorks to replace Cisco's existing earthquake table fixture across all 4 hydraulic shaker tables. The previous design used a simple 4×4 bolt pattern, requiring a secondary adapter plate to be custom-drilled and stacked on top for each new rack configuration. The new full hole-pattern eliminated the two-plate system entirely — test engineers can now drill directly into the plate with a magnetic drill and mount any server rack configuration in the X, Y, and Z axes without additional fabrication. Design was transferred to engineering drawings and fabricated by an external machine shop.
With the fixture in place, also developed custom MDVT profiles in collaboration with engineering teams to recreate specific real-world conditions in the lab. Working from displacement targets or known field failures, accelerometers were attached to high-leverage areas like cards and brackets to capture how units responded to specific forces and frequencies. Results were delivered back to engineering teams to support root cause analysis and inform design decisions.
Passive Airflow Louver System
One of 5 engineers on a semester-long senior capstone project to design a passive mechanical airflow oscillation system powered solely by a box fan — no external electricity allowed. Led the gear box design and 3D printed lever arm development, which transferred mechanical power from the gears to the louvers.
The lever arm went through multiple iterations — early versions popped out or shifted under load. The breakthrough came from flipping the attachment direction bottom-up rather than top-down, locking it in place. Anemometer-based CFM measurements were used to select the best fan pairing and validate that nine 2.5" louvers at 45 degrees moved air nearly as effectively as the fan alone.
Instron Test Fixture Design
R&D co-op at NxStage Medical, a hemodialysis company specializing in in-home dialysis treatment. Identified that the existing product packaging was causing filter components to break during shipping due to how they were positioned in the box. Redesigned the packaging to eliminate the failure mode while also fitting 20% more product per box — directly reducing both damage rates and shipping costs.
Also designed and built a custom machine shop fixture to hold tube connector assemblies on an Instron machine for force-of-breakage testing against ISO and ASTM standards, and performed pass/fail leakage testing to verify air could not enter the blood line during treatment.
Quality Engineering & Automation
Quality Engineering co-op at DePuy Synthes (Johnson & Johnson) in Raynham, MA. Automated the daily Pareto chart that was previously built manually every shift — wrote an Excel VBA macro that extracted data directly from a local server and generated the chart automatically, giving operators immediate visibility into top errors from the previous shift without any manual work.
Performed validation testing on 4 new ultrasonic welders replacing older machines on the Neuro Surgical Patty line, creating Validation Protocols, Operation Qualifications, and Performance Qualifications with statistical analysis in Minitab. Also conducted a time study of the Non-Conformance return process and identified human fatigue as a contributing factor — operators were manually entering PIDs repeatedly, making transcription errors on a tedious repetitive task. Implemented a barcoding solution that eliminated manual entry entirely, delivering $1,500 in annual savings.
Contact
Open to hardware engineering, test engineering, and compliance roles. Let's talk.
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iPhone Display Failure Analysis
Supplier Quality Engineering co-op on Apple's iPhone team during the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus launch. Performed component-level failure analysis on a select group of field-returned units with display issues — opening the housing, detaching the screen, and swapping components against a working control unit to isolate whether the fault was in the display or the motherboard before sending to the supplier for further analysis.
Also performed manufacturing data analysis across multiple display suppliers in Asia using JMP and Excel, tracking yield rates and defect types across the product lifecycle. Findings were compiled into management reports and supplier-facing summaries to support quality decisions and future product design.
Sports Card Inventory App
Built and self-hosted a full-stack sports card inventory application on a home Proxmox server running Docker. The app was developed using AI-assisted rapid development and integrates third-party APIs for card data, barcode generation for physical labeling, and a SQLite database backend for tracking the full collection.
Features include a homepage inventory display, full card library view, individual card detail pages with storage location tracking, and an analytics dashboard for collection stats. The entire stack runs on the home server alongside other self-hosted projects.
Environmental Lab Management Tool
Built a full-stack internal lab management tool at Cisco using AI-assisted rapid development. The tool replaced a manual test logging process across a 4-engineer team, standardizing data capture and automating Word report generation in the quality-controlled format required for compliance documentation.
The stack includes a front-end entry interface where engineers log what product was tested and when, a SQLite backend database, and automated report output directly to Word. The tool also tracks chamber and shaker table utilization — providing leadership with first-time visibility into equipment usage metrics and saving the team 20+ hours of manual work weekly.