Standard products director Anthony F. Jordan is one of nine senior managers at Aeroflex Colorado Springs (Colorado Springs, CO), a business unit of Aeroflex Microelectronics Solutions (Plainview, NY). His peers oversee the other business units: ASIC technology, circuit card assembly and commercial mixed signal, as well as marketing, sales, HR and of course IT.
Aeroflex Colorado Springs supplies standard VLSI circuits, custom circuit card assemblies and more. Most are sold for use in satellites and avionics; these space products employ radiation-hardened technologies to help them function in super-harsh environments.
Two dozen direct reports
There are about 220 employees in all at the Colorado Springs facility. Jordan's group has about two dozen engineers, half in design and half in apps. They range from new college grads to highly experienced techies.
"I think it's important that the young engineers have someone to work with and learn the tricks of the trade," Jordan says. "I make sure they know my door is open at any time to come in and talk."
R&D
Jordan has filled his director role at Aeroflex for five years. He's responsible for the multi-million-dollar R&D budget of his cost center, working on new products and next-generation architecture for density, speed, power and reliable course performance when the product is in orbit. About 90 percent of the budget currently goes to IC solutions for satellite apps.
"We're constantly looking at process technology as well as the satellite electronics requirements," he says. "Electronic solutions, performance, size, weight and flexibility are all key in the satellite electronics industry."
Other responsibilities include revenue growth and return on R&D investment for the global product line, which includes memories, microcontrollers, logic and serial data bus interfaces. "If it's flying, we're most likely part of it," Jordan declares.
Electrical inclination
Jordan grew up in Denver, CO where his father, an Air Force supply sergeant, was stationed. His mother was a teacher. In 1976, the summer after his sophomore year, a high school counselor encouraged Jordan to attend a minority engineering orientation program at Colorado School of Mines.
The outdoor rigors of civil engineering didn't appeal, but he loved the cool peace of the computer lab. Getting programs to run in Fortran and Basic were challenges he enjoyed. Next summer he was back for more work in programming.
He entered Bradley University (Peoria, IL) in 1978. There were only a few African Americans on campus, and he was the only one in his class when he got his BSEE in 1982. "There were some good lessons to be learned," he says. "It's life, and it really prepares you for your career."
Working for Kodak
Jordan followed his interest in photography to Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY) and a job as an integrated circuit test engineer.
He wanted an advanced degree, and Kodak's tuition support program helped him get started at Rochester Institute of Technology. Some of the classes were conveniently held at the Kodak plant.
Jordan liked the test work but really wanted to be in design, and two years later he got his wish when he was promoted to integrated circuit design engineer. He also did some college recruiting for Kodak and, he says, "found out I could be a 'people' person." He completed his MSEE in 1986.
Back to Colorado
Ready for a change of location, and interested in taking his design expertise into applications, Jordan accepted an offer from United Technologies Microelectronics Center (UTMC, now Aeroflex) in 1988. Now he was an applications engineer and back in his home state of Colorado.
As the link between designer and user, he had plenty of customer contact and enjoyed it. Most of the customers were in the aircraft industry. He was promoted to senior apps engineer in 1990 and principal apps engineer in 1993.
"Seeing how the systems were expected to work really put the whole puzzle together for me," he says. "I think it really improved my technical base. I still had a strong tie to design."
The "in-house MBA"
In 1995 the company reorganized. Jordan was sent to the new business development group, where he leveraged his customer and applications experience into strategic marketing. It was the beginning of what Jordan calls his "in-house MBA."
"We determined which products to fund and made sure they were a success in the marketplace," he says. "I really enjoyed it. I started to learn the financial side of the business."
He was standard product marketing manager, then standard product line manager with more financial responsibilities. In 2000 he took on his present director's role.
Keeping current
Jordan continues to read and improve his technical and business skills. He greatly appreciated the opportunity to take a quick course in finance offered in-house by United Technologies Corp (Hartford, CT), UTMC's parent corporation.
That, he thinks, is the way it should be done. "If you have a strong technical base you can pick up the finance," he says. "But you can't just pick up semiconductors, physics, RF communication or the next generation of encryption that's going to move data in the gigahertz range."
Working with the kids
Jordan has two children, an eleven-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, so a lot of his free time is spent coaching soccer and improving his photography. He looks forward to more community involvement as the children grow up, probably teaming with his mother, who is an active volunteer in Denver.
Ten years ago he worked on a NSBE program to engage grade school kids in rocket building. That program is still going strong. "I enjoy working with kids," he says.
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