Flagship · professional engineering
Hardening Mission-Critical Test Infrastructure in a Constrained Enterprise
2022 – present · Three concurrent efforts
Three concurrent efforts across the test infrastructure for a strategic defense guidance system: one originated, one led, one built from scratch. Written public-safe — internal program identifiers omitted.
- Ada
- C++
- LabVIEW
- Hardware integration
- Requirements engineering
- Stakeholder communication
At a glance
- Role
- Software Engineer 2; also held Systems Engineer roles earlier in tenure
- Period
- Sep 2022 – present
- Scope
- Three concurrent efforts across test infrastructure, plus internal frontier-AI adoption
- Stack
- Ada · C++ · LabVIEW · Hardware integration · Requirements engineering
- Status
- Active across all three efforts; calibration suite in production-facing use
- Calibration suite
- Zero software to production in ~6 months (solo); sub-arcsecond real-time, matched 1:1 to a mechanical reference
- Recognition
- Two Boeing recognition awards for engineering impact and acceptance success
Why this mattered
Test infrastructure is what the rest of an engineering organization depends on. When the test bench is wrong, every downstream judgment about the system under test is wrong. The work here is about supportability and confidence in the data the bench produces, not aesthetics.
My role and ownership
Across the three efforts: originated the largest active modernization initiative at the site — its flagship test-station suite — by framing system risk from 20+ years of production logs and taking the path forward to Boeing and U.S. Air Force leadership; led the software strategy on the second-largest suite's VXI-to-PXI instrumentation overhaul as the lead software engineer; built a new calibration-equipment software suite from scratch and carried it through acceptance into production-facing daily use. Also mentored an intern and an early-career software engineer along the way.
Core constraints
- Brittle legacy systems with real production usage: modernization can't disrupt active operations.
- Hardware-software interfaces where the legacy behavior carries meaning that has to be preserved.
- Sensitive program context: some implementation details are intentionally omitted or generalized.
- Cross-discipline stakeholders: modernization has to be defensible across software, systems, and engineering leadership.
Architecture and key decisions
Flagship test-station suite overhaul (originator)
The site's flagship test-station suite — roughly 15 engineers across 5 interconnected stations. Turned a station-level assignment into a program-level effort: a risk analysis across 20+ years of production logs became the case for modernization, framed and taken to Boeing and U.S. Air Force leadership. The interesting part wasn't the technical depth alone; it was pairing system understanding with disciplined analysis and stakeholder communication until a credible path forward existed.
- Ada
- Requirements engineering
- Stakeholder communication
Legacy instrumentation overhaul (lead software engineer)
The site's second-largest test-station suite: a 1990s-era VXI platform migrated to modern PXI. Inherited a brittle legacy environment with real constraints and missing pieces; the work has been careful tradeoffs — new hardware slotted in behind the existing test executive so reliability returns without rewriting the test logic, preserving the legacy behavior that matters instead of pretending the system is greenfield.
- LabVIEW
- C++
- VXI → PXI
- Hardware integration
- Legacy migration
Calibration-equipment software suite (from scratch)
Built solo as lead software engineer, zero software to production in ~6 months: a validation gate that precision-guidance hardware passes through before it ships. It replaced a purely mechanical reference and had to match it 1:1, at sub-arcsecond angular precision in real time, to slot into an ecosystem built around the legacy unit's exact behavior. Carried the full formal artifact set: SRS, Software Test Plan, Software Test Procedure, and VDD.
- LabVIEW
- Real-time
- Sub-arcsecond precision
- Formal V&V
Execution highlights
- Calibration-equipment software suite delivered solo (zero software to production in ~6 months), replacing a purely mechanical reference, matched 1:1 at sub-arcsecond real-time precision.
- Second-largest test-station suite advanced from 1990s VXI toward modern PXI, with new hardware integrated behind the existing test executive alongside preserved legacy behaviors.
- Program-level risk framing built from 20+ years of production logs and presented to Boeing and U.S. Air Force leadership.
- Internal frontier-AI adoption led across two organizations, including bounded agent skills that let an ITAR/CUI-compliant sovereign-cloud model work a legacy Ada codebase.
Impact / current state
All three efforts active; calibration suite is in production-facing daily use. Recognized with two Boeing awards for engineering impact and acceptance success. Internal frontier-AI adoption continues across two organizations.
What this demonstrates
Ownership of mission-critical systems under real constraints, stakeholder trust earned through clear analysis and communication, and the discipline to modernize without pretending the system is greenfield.
This page is written public-safe: internal program identifiers and codenames are omitted, and sensitive implementation detail is generalized. What remains is cleared for public use.