Changing technologies
OPPORTUNITIES IN SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Systems engineers manage super-complex projects

These multi-disciplined folks work to integrate a multitude of individual elements into one coherent system

“You see the results of very smart people doing really interesting engineering.” – Michelle Rahn, SS/L

By Laura Gater
Contributing Editor

Edilia Correa supports military aviation ops at Defense Supply Center Richmond.

On the BNSF Railway, Marcus Clay works with the new radio telephony integration app.

Systems engineers hold a variety of jobs with a range of job titles. But whatever the specifics of their jobs, their work is multi-disciplinary. They manage the life cycles of complex projects, bringing multiple factors together into a comprehensive solution.

The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE, www.incose.org, Seattle, WA) defines the work this way: “Systems engineering is concerned with the overall process of defining, developing, operating, maintaining and ultimately replacing quality systems. Where other engineering disciplines concentrate on the details of individual aspects, systems engineering is concerned with the integration of all these aspects into a coherent and effective system.”

Systems engineers follow a variety of career paths. The number of diverse techies in the field is increasing, and their contributions are held in high esteem by the companies that employ them. Jared L. Bates, president of SYColeman Corp, sums it up when he says, “We recognize that to compete in a diversified world, it is essential to recruit, hire and retain a high-quality diversified workforce.”

Bill Durham: building the nation’s ballistic missile defense system
Bill Durham joined SYColeman (Arlington, VA) after a successful Air Force career and many years in the defense industry. Today he is chief systems engineer in the company’s technical services and security group.

Durham graduated from North Carolina A&T State University-Greensboro in 1974 with a BS in industrial technology. His Air Force career started immediately afterward when he was commissioned as a lieutenant. He earned a 1980 MS in systems and resource management from Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA). In 2006, Durham completed an MS in engineering and technology management at George Washington University (Washington, DC).

“The Air Force gave me a strong base for leading and managing complex activities,” he says. “I honed my technical skills on air operations and combat plans. My insight into defense systems requirements is a byproduct of my experience.”

After more than twenty-five years as an Air Force officer, Durham entered the civilian sector in 1995 as a systems engineer. “At first I was a self-employed consultant, which was somewhat uncomfortable after all those years in the Air Force,” he remembers. He soon found that defense contractors working on systems for battle management command, control, communication and intelligence operations appreciated his technical expertise.

In 1996 Durham joined H.J. Ford and Associates (Arlington, VA) as a senior systems engineer, leading systems engineering services for the development of joint-theater air and missile defense architectures and systems. In 1999 he went to work for SYColeman as a senior systems engineer. He provides engineering services and program management assistance in the acquisition, development and testing of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system.

“I have had a lot of experience planning, integrating and executing major projects and operations in the military and industry. This is what systems engineers do: we make many complex subsystems work harmoniously as one big system. It’s a challenging and rewarding task,” Durham declares.

SS/L’s Michelle Rahn is systems engineering manager on Intelsat 14

Michelle Rahn.

Michelle Rahn is a spacecraft systems engineering manager at Space Systems/Loral (SS/L, Palo Alto, CA). “In our industry, systems engineering provides the technical leadership for a program. We make sure that unit designs, interfaces, integration, testing and launch go smoothly and that the customer is pleased with the on-orbit performance,” she explains.

The process from beginning to launch takes about two and a half years. “I can tell you there’s a huge amount of satisfaction as well as terror on launch day when you see the rocket blast off from the pad!” she says.

“That point is the beginning of the mission where you see the results of really smart people doing really interesting engineering.”

Satellite work requires every discipline of engineering, she notes: structural dynamics, controls, RF, thermodynamics, power and electronics, mechanical, propulsion, software, and of course rocket science. “I think there are few fields more interesting than this one,” Rahn declares.

Rahn grew up in many beautiful parts of California, since her father was a ranger in the state parks. She credits her high school physics teacher with pointing out her strength in math and science and suggesting an engineering career.

She graduated from California Polytechnic State University in 1984 with a BSME. Later, SS/L sponsored her 1992 MS in engineering management from Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA).

In 1986 Ford Aerospace (now SS/L) hired Rahn to do solar array deployment simulations for the geostationary operational environmental satellite (GOES). After that she moved to solar array deployment mechanism design, which led to responsibility for the overall solar array design for Intelsat 7. That was a brand new, far more powerful solar array than any previously built, she says. Its basic mechanisms are still in use.

“I took on more responsibilities for the mechanical portions of the satellite. I was the systems mechanical engineer on several programs, and that led to responsibility for systems engineering on the entire satellite,” she recalls.

She was one of the first systems engineers to work on Globalstar, which uses a large constellation of communications satellites to bring telephone service where no infrastructure is available: on boats at sea, for example.

“Globalstar was an engineering effort that involved the U.S., Germany, France and Italy, and was built and tested in Italy,” Rahn explains. “I was one of the systems engineers, and traveled to Europe several times.”

She left Globalstar to be systems ME on Telstar 5-Mabuhay-Apstar, three concurrent satellite programs; she was the bus lead for Telstar 6 and 7.

Now she’s systems engineering manager on the Intelsat 14 project. She translates requirements into satellite architecture and then into hardware.

Rahn credits several mentors with her career success. One of them, now president and COO of SS/L, was her supervisor on the Solar Array project.

He showed her the power of diplomacy in working with other people, she notes. The systems engineering manager on Globalstar, another mentor, taught her systems engineering methodology.

She enjoys the diversity at SS/L, which reflects the population of California’s Silicon Valley. “SS/L is so diverse that minority and majority don’t have much meaning here,” she says. “Our population is a variety of gender, heritage, ethnicity and age. We relate to how good a person is as an engineer rather than what the wrapper looks like.”

For the future? She would be perfectly happy continuing the fascinating challenges of her current position. “I have a great boss, I’m working with really superb customer representatives and I have a staff of exceptionally capable people,” she says. “I can’t imagine ever leaving this field until I’m ready to retire.

“Even the people who retire here often come back to work as consultants for us,” she adds. “The work and the people here become a part of you.”

Edilia Correa is engineering division chief at DSCR

Edilia Correa.

Edilia Correa is engineering division chief in the aviation engineering directorate at Defense Supply Center Richmond (DSCR) (Richmond, VA), part of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA, Fort Belvoir, VA). Her division provides technical and engineering support to DSCR operations that involve military aviation.

Correa was born in Havana, Cuba. She came to the U.S. in 1968 with her brother and parents. They settled in Hartford, CT and opened a neighborhood store.

“As a kid I wanted to work for NASA,” Correa says. “My high school guidance counselor suggested that engineering would be a good start, and I liked the idea of working with aviation or the space program. Mechanical engineering lends itself to whatever you might want to specialize in.” She received her BSME from the University of Hartford (Hartford, CT) in 1978.

After graduation she went to work for McDonnell Douglas (St. Louis, MO). She did a variety of jobs, including work with flight simulation and pilot training systems. In 1990 she moved to the company’s technology marketing division. As a business development rep, she was the link between the company and U.S. government agencies on military R&D projects.

In 1992 Correa moved to Philip Morris USA (Richmond, VA), taking a job in the technology assessment and planning group of the R&D department. She was a team leader in the department’s continuous improvement initiative, and later in the packaging branch. When her job was eliminated in 1998 she found work teaching high school algebra and geometry at a Spanish immersion center in Virginia.

In 2001 Correa was hired by Cherokee Information Systems (Richmond, VA), a contractor to the DSCR. She provided tech support for QA specialists, reviewing offers, helping with procurement, validating technical data packages and managing records. In 2002 she landed a value engineering post at DSCR.

In 2003 she became team lead for the Navy group in the sustainment engineering branch, identifying and funding projects to improve the reliability of aviation items. She was promoted to branch chief the next year. Now, “Instead of just trying to identify projects for the Navy, I was overseeing the growth of the DLA reliability program across all the military services, as well as working out the internal procedures and details.”

As branch chief, Correa led an effort to standardize how the branch prepared proposals and managed its projects, including documenting progress in a common database. The database, considered an important engineering project management tool, has been rolled out across the branch.

In 2007 Correa became chief of the engineering division. Now she oversees four branches: sustainment engineering, value engineering, standardization and pricing. The manager of an R&D effort in the weapons system sustainment area reports to her.

She credits her job at Philip Morris, which combined innovation and engineering skills, with giving her insights that she calls on in her present work. “That job gave me the ability to take what I knew I could do as an engineer and ramp it up on a global perspective,” she explains. “A solution here can lead to an improved product which can often be applied to multiple uses, and then it can provide global-wide benefits across military services.”

The DLA is a very diverse employer, and Correa “appreciates the opportunities a diverse workplace provides.” She mentors two Hispanic girls through a school partnership program at DLA, and would like to work with adult women as well. “People from other cultures don’t automatically understand how we communicate and do business. We need to ensure that there’s a level playing field and not leave anyone behind,” says Correa.

Marcus Clay helps improve the BNSF’s new RTI app

Marcus Clay.

In 2007, Marcus Clay moved from consulting engineer I to systems engineer II on the BNSF Railway (Fort Worth, TX). He’s working with the railway’s new radio telephony integration (RTI) “ClassOne” application.

Engineers from BNSF and another company are testing and implementing the app, which will combine all previous telecom on the railroad into one state-of-the-art system. It will, for example, let field crews join in conference calls, improving dispatchers’ ability to manage train traffic. The new system will soon be deployed to more than a hundred dispatchers.

Clay grew up in Forest Park, OK. His mother is in real estate and his father worked for American Airlines. In high school he enjoyed electronics and computer classes, and he graduated from Southwest Oklahoma State University in 1983 with a BSCS. Next came ten years in the U.S. Army, where Clay served as a technical signals officer and computer automation officer for his brigade. He left the Army with the rank of captain.

“A lot of things I did in the Army were related to automation. I did communications, signal and tactical work, radio teletypes and telephone with video, and these brought me full circle as far as understanding how to provide a particular service for customers,” Clay explains.

Out of the Army in 1994, Clay went to work as a server engineer for LAN admin at BNSF. He was responsible for building, supporting and maintaining all the company’s Windows servers: more than 150 at six locations.

Once, he recalls, “I had the challenge of moving all our computer systems from one building to another with minimal downtime. I had very little redundant equipment, but I knew where to borrow what I needed. I got the systems back up and running with only a couple of hours down.”

Clay was promoted to consulting engineer I in 2002. He worked on a service delivery team which outsourced automation projects and helped manage service-level agreements.

“The only career challenges I face are those that I put on myself,” says Clay. He takes advantage of management-related courses provided onsite by BNSF.

The company offers technical classes to help employees explore other company-related career avenues, and Clay attends those, too. “I’ve been thinking about moving into management,” he says. “Or I might continue in my career field as a technical consultant.”

Julie Madhusoodanan: test lead for Windows

Julie Madhusoodanan.

Julie Madhusoodanan is a senior test lead in Microsoft’s Windows division (Redmond, WA). She manages the Windows client version and setup experience as well as Windows media Internet service test teams.

Five team leaders report to her, and she manages a team of about twenty-five people. Before this assignment, she led a team in Microsoft’s office division working on the Office 2007 product development cycle.

Madhusoodanan grew up in Bangalore, India, enjoying music, dance, piano and tennis. These activities taught her to multitask and understand the value of time, focus and commitment, she says. “They went a long way in helping me in my career.”

She was introduced to computers at school and was fascinated by them. She took summer courses, learned several programming languages and decided to make computers her career.

In 1997 Madhusoodanan received the equivalent of a BSCS from the BMS college of engineering at Bangalore University (Bangalore, India). She went to work at Synectics (Bangalore, India) as a software developer, designing and coding part of a product that helped banks transfer funds using the SWIFT protocol.

She came to the U.S. for her 1999 MSCS, which she earned at the University of Missouri. She worked at Ernst & Young (St. Louis, MO) as a technical software consultant for six months and then joined Microsoft.

Madhusoodanan credits her previous jobs with preparing her for her current leadership role. “The biggest takeaways are the application of engineering skills and knowledge to building real-world products.

“I’ve had the good fortune to work with some amazing leaders and professionals,” she says. “They acted as sounding boards and provided valuable insights when I was making work-related decisions.”

Madhusoodanan believes in mentorship, and is helping several women at Microsoft both formally and informally. “It’s definitely a two-way street,” she says. “I learn a lot from my mentees, and it’s super-exciting to watch them grow in their careers.

“One of the reasons I like being a lead is that mentoring is naturally built into the role. I’m having a great time with some of the smartest and most passionate folks in the world.”

She notes that the increase of women in engineering roles at Microsoft is “a testament to the importance the company places on diversity and creating an enjoyable working environment.”

Microsoft’s Mylene Padolina, senior diversity consultant, adds that “Microsoft competes on the global stage for the rich talent needed to create innovations. Our goal is to build the greatest multicultural workplace in the technology industry!”

D/C

Laura Gater is a freelance business and medical/ healthcare writer based in northeast Indiana.

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