‘Systems engineering requires a different thinking style,” says Valerie Gundrum. Many engineers, she explains, “like to dig in and get into all the details.” Systems engineers approach their work from a different angle: their specialty is “pulling all the details together.”

Gundrum is certainly well qualified to discuss the topic. She’s a systems engineer herself, working at Lockheed Martin (Owego, NY). She’s also communications chair for the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE, www.incose.org), and managing editor of Insight, an INCOSE publication.

Despite the slow economy, “More companies are recognizing the need to create systems thinkers,” Gundrum observes. As evidence, she notes the increasing offerings of systems engineering courses and degrees by universities nationwide. “Schools don’t offer these courses unless they see a business need,” she points out.

In addition to the long-standing BS program at the University of Virginia, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) now has an MS in systems engineering, and the University of Portland, OR offers a systems degree via the Internet. Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ), which devotes an entire department to systems engineering and engineering management, held a conference on systems integration earlier this year.

“I think the importance of systems engineering will grow, especially in light of the increase in large, complex systems. The consumer wants connectivity, and to achieve this you must have engineers with the ability to think on a large scale,” Gundrum emphasizes.

Applied Signal Technology: strong and ongoing need
Applied Signal Technology (Sunnyvale, CA) designs, develops and manufactures signal intelligence, processing and collection equipment for defense applications. The intelligence industry has seen considerable growth in recent times. “We experienced a 12 percent growth in 2002,” says Todd Penns, senior technical recruiter.

“A good systems engineer with intelligence experience and active security clearances is like gold to us,” says Penns. Obtaining clearance isn’t simple, however, and not only the candidates but every member of their immediate households must be U.S. citizens.

Systems engineers at Applied Signal interface between the customer and the company. They need strong project management skills and expertise in the telecom area, including network switching equipment and digital signal processing for intelligence, Penns observes.

Applied Signal’s Lisa Hatamoto, left, and daughter: “You keep up with technology.”

Lisa Hatamoto works in wireless at Applied Signal
Lisa Hatamoto is a deputy engineering department manager in Applied Signal’s wireless communications systems division. “Our division builds wireless signal processing and gathering equipment,” she explains. “I coordinate and oversee R&D projects, look toward future products and trends, and research newer and more advanced signals.

“Signals are constantly evolving, and our challenge is to go after and process them from an intelligence standpoint,” she says – including law enforcement and terrorist tracking.

Hatamoto uses her systems engineering background to look at risk areas, get programs into optimum order, detect missing steps in processes and troubleshoot to ensure successful program execution.

“From an engineering perspective, this is a very attractive area,” she says. “The defense industry puts a lot of money and energy into R&D. Here you definitely keep up with communications technology.”

Hatamoto started with Applied Signal when she received her BSEE from the University of California-Davis in 1987. “I grew with the company,” she says. “When I started there were only sixty people. Now we have over 350.”

Her first work was in production and test, debugging circuit cards. She moved from production and test into circuit-board development, then went on to hardware design and systems-level testing.

She moved into systems engineering just before the 1990 Desert Storm conflict. “It was the first time I had gone out to a customer site, and while I was overseas the war started. Suddenly I understood why I was doing these things,” she recalls. She moved up through junior program manager to her current position.

Hatamoto says her Japanese heritage and her parents’ encouragement were key in her decision to pursue an engineering career. Systems engineering, however, was strictly her own choice. “Basically I’m a ‘bigger picture’ person,” she says.

Patrick Dunn.

Unisys: development and deployment support
Unisys (Blue Bell, PA) is an IT services and solutions company with a worldwide presence. Systems engineers at the company perform a variety of tasks related to network and systems management, and support the development and deployment of the company’s infrastructure managed services.

“As an example, our systems engineers may be tasked with reviewing a client’s network for speed and optimization,” says Patrick Dunn, director of workforce planning and recruitment technology. Dunn has some openings for systems engineers in security, Microsoft and network integration areas.

“Many companies are reviewing security vulnerabilities in response to the post-September 11 climate. Others are looking at everything from migrating their enterprise to MS Exchange 2000, to outsourcing some or all of their IT infrastructure,” he says.

Stephanie Jackson of Unisys: the challenge of exceeding expectations.

Stephanie Jackson works on public safety apps at Unisys
As a consultant for Unisys, Stephanie Jackson brings her knowledge of public safety applications to bear on clients’ requirements. Her clients are correctional facilities, courts, child welfare, police and fire departments and other components of state and local governments across the country. She’s responsible for the life cycle of each project, from design and development through integration and implementation.

Jackson began her career in 1983 as a programmer with Mini-Systems, Inc (Orange, NJ), which develops software for public safety, health, child welfare and licensing apps. She studied business admin and CS at Bloomfield College (Bloomfield, NJ) but left to concentrate on her job. Since then she’s taken courses in Oracle, Crystal Reports, project management and more.

She joined Unisys in 1987 as a programmer, developing public safety apps using the company’s 4-GL language. By the mid 1990s she was ready for greater challenges.

“I started with pre-sales, doing site studies and responding to RFPs, attending trade shows and doing demos. I found I enjoyed the challenge of meeting or exceeding client expectations,” Jackson says. Her consulting job is the next logical step in her systems career.

Active hiring at National Semiconductor
“We’re one of the few technology companies investing R&D dollars, building new products and actively hiring engineers,” says Brian Ridgeway, professional staffing manager at National Semiconductor Corp (NSC, Santa Clara, CA). Some 10,000 employees worldwide, including 2,700 at Santa Clara HQ, are involved with analog and mixed signal semiconductor products at thirty design centers around the world, fabs in Texas, Maine and Greenock, Scotland, and assembly plants in Southeast Asia.

Two new initiatives are driving hiring: a portable-power project aiming to increase battery life for mobile electronics, and the area of power management in general. “As we develop new product roadmaps we’ll need new engineering teams,” Ridgeway says.

National Semiconductor’s Noel Sy: “I have to ensure that we remain effective.”

NSC’s Noel Sy maintains amplifier consistency
Noel Sy, whose family background is Filipino, works in the analog product group at NSC. Product engineers fill the systems niche at NSC, and Sy is the product engineer on a team of six to nine engineers.

“My products are amplifiers, and I develop new ones from design to release. I work with circuit designers and test, quality, reliability and marketing engineers.

“The chips we produce are used in hundreds of types of devices, including routers, servers, electronic toys – you name it. They buffer signals or adjust signals when integrated with other chips.”

Sy is an expert at statistical analysis of yields, manufacturability and profitability. “I make sure the project makes sense from both a technology and a business point of view,” he explains.

He completed his BSEE at California State Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo, CA) in 1988 and took a job as a product engineer in NSC’s programmable logic group. A few years later he left the company to join startup Wafer Scale Integration (WSI, Fremont, CA) as a product engineer developing programmable memory and microprocessor interface products.

“I always wanted to try working at a startup, and thought it was best to do it while I was still young,” Sy says.

After a year he returned to NSC, joining the LAN group. “I worked with larger, more complex chips and it was very exciting,” he reports. Then he transferred into the amplifier products group where he works today.

Sy was drawn to product engineering by the challenge and satisfaction of pulling a project together. “Manufacturability is a major concern with any project,” he notes. “I have to ensure that we remain effective and the product remains consistent.”

His most exciting job so far was the line of high-speed amplifiers he recently helped kick off. “We were working with a completely new technology, yet we were able to release eight products simultaneously and reduce the time to market considerably. We are still building on that family of products.”

Christopher C. Westpoint is an infrastructure consultant for Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Christopher Westpoint consults on infrastructure
Christopher C. Westpoint is an infrastructure consultant who specializes in directory services for Microsoft’s consulting office in New York City. Since his job ranges from working with clients to validating technical designs in a lab environment, it might well be called systems engineering.

“After customers purchase our software, they may call us in to help them design, secure and maintain the new products in their existing environments. It’s my responsibility to architect a solution,” he explains. Because the software must operate within each client’s framework, Westpoint researches the situation to understand how the client does business before creating the solution.

His focus is on directory services: where a user account will exist, how it will be managed, and what access the account should have throughout the network. “The directory service is the backbone of a network. It determines who has access to what resources. This has to be planned out, especially in a large enterprise.”

Westpoint graduated from Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY) in 1995 with a BS in information science and technology and a concentration in telecom. Then he worked as an independent consultant, helping Waldenbooks, the mall bookstore, move its corporate HQ from Stamford, CT to Ann Arbor, MI. “This helped me understand the logistics behind moving a data center. I learned how to make the move appear seamless from the users’ perspective.”

Next Westpoint found a job as a PC support specialist for retailer Nine West Group, Inc (White Plains, NY). He was responsible for more than 700 workstations. “I learned early on that when you are called in for one problem, you evaluate the system and fix the problems that haven’t been identified yet.”

Within a year he moved on to network support, “dealing with back-end machines or servers instead of end users.”

Next came a job with Bell Atlantic Network Integration as a consultant and technical analyst for a major Wall Street client. And in 1997 he joined Investors Capital Service, Inc (New York, NY) as an associate network engineer. He learned how to deal with vendors, stabilize a network and prepare for disaster recovery. “This position had the widest range of responsibilities and taught me the most,” he says. In 2000 he joined Microsoft.

In high school, Westpoint interned at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, NY) as part of a work-study program. “It lasted two years and was very important in exposing me to technology. I saw a researcher at IBM type something into a computer and get a message back from someone in a different state. He was using Internet relay chat. It was 1989 and I was amazed,” Westpoint recalls.

“As a black man I was taught two things by my mother,” Westpoint reminisces. “One, the world is not always fair, and two, because of that I might have to work four times as hard as the next person to achieve the same goal. I have internalized both my mother’s ideas as fundamental work ethics.”

And work he does. At one point he was assigned to a high-profile client who was frankly dubious about Westpoint’s lack of experience. “I figured it out on the job and the project was completely successful. That taught me that an engagement is what you make of it. If people don’t want to give you a chance, you have to take the chance for yourself,” Westpoint says.

Microsoft infrastructure consultant DuWayne Harrison: “When it’s all done there’s a huge sense of accomplishment.”

DuWayne Harrison helps customers at Microsoft
DuWayne D. Harrison is also an infrastructure consultant at Microsoft, where he works in the company’s Financial Services East office (New York, NY). He designs Windows infrastructure solutions incorporating components from Nokia, Cisco, IBM, HP, Dell and others.

Harrison spends much of his time at customer sites, working on project-related issues and making sure that each project is completed correctly and on time. His work, he says, demands skills in deductive reasoning as well as financial know-how.

Harrison went to Syracuse University, where he studied information management and technology with a concentration in IS and telecom. While he was in college he did an internship in New York City, at the office of the president of the borough of Manhattan. He was there as a computer specialist, helping the systems director and solving technical problems.

When he received his BS in 1995, Harrison joined Integrated Systems Solutions Corp (Rochester, NY). He worked as a desktop specialist, installing and configuring workstation hardware and software, then moved on to LAN server support.

The next year Harrison went to work for IBM Global Services (Rochester, NY) as an NT server/LAN server architect. By 1998 he had become a pre-sales consultant for IBM’s Netfinity products, working with financial industry customers in New York City. Three years ago Harrison joined Microsoft as a technology specialist. At first he helped commercial customers, then moved back to the financial arena with his current position.

He’s young to be aceing such complex responsibilities. “Older people do not always like listening to a young, energetic black male or having him design a solution for them,” Harrison says with a twinkle in his eye. And, of course, “Getting all the pieces of a solution to come together and work well can be frustrating for a while,” he admits. “But when it’s all done, there’s a huge sense of accomplishment.”

In his spare time Harrison mentors new grads entering his field, working as a member of Syracuse U’s minority alumni organization.

Systems field engineering at Pall Trinity Micro
Pall Trinity Micro, a subsidiary of Pall Corp (East Hills, NY), designs, manufactures and installs filtration, separation and purification systems for biopharmaceutical, water processing, food and beverages, aerospace, microelectronics and other high-tech industries. Systems engineering at Pall involves a broad range of skills, including proficiency in EE, ME and ChE.

“Because of the degree of automation in our systems, when we hire field engineers we lean toward EEs with some knowledge of other disciplines,” says Brent Vanzandt, director of the systems services group. “But we also hire MEs and ChEs and bring them up to speed in automation technology.”

Vanzandt anticipates company growth. “The Southwest and West Coast are today’s major growth areas for water filtration, but we expect to see growth across the country with the increase in government regulations.”

Paula Stapf does field work for Pall Trinity Micro
“My systems work definitely involves a lot of coordinating,” says Paula Stapf. “State and federal filtration regulations are getting tighter and we have to match them.” As a senior system field engineer and site rep in the system services group of Pall Corp, Stapf does field service work for the food, beverage and marine industries in South Carolina.

One important duty relates to desalination. “I support membrane filtration on ships,” she explains.

That means she helps start up new company filtration systems for desalting seawater, as well as servicing existing systems. She trains customer personnel in system operation and helps with pilot testing. The systems she supports include process and analytical instrumentation, programmable logic controllers, plumbing and, of course, filtration technology. “I have to be conversant in all these areas,” Stapf notes.

To back up her work, she has a 1985 BS in chemistry from Siena College (Loudonville, NY) and a 1997 BS in environmental and hazardous materials management from the University of Maryland.

She began her career with DuPont (Wilmington, DE), starting as a chemist/technician. She went on to water applications chemist, designing bench-scale reverse osmosis systems, supporting them and eventually troubleshooting at reverse osmosis plants.

In 1989 she joined Westinghouse Savannah River Co, which was operating a Department of Energy nuclear facility in Aiken, SC. “I worked as senior operations specialist for the reverse osmosis plant of a high-level waste-treatment facility,” she explains.

But operations wasn’t as interesting to her as the work she’d been doing before. “I loved going out and fixing equipment and seeing the application of the technology. I wanted to oversee products from concept to implementation,” she says. So after she completed her BS in materials management in 1997, Stapf started working for Pall.

She’s come to realize the value of the knowledge she gained in operations. “In this job you see how people interact with the equipment. You can design the best equipment in the world, but if people can’t work with it, it’s useless.

“The challenge is to get the components to marry in the field, to have the customer’s system mesh with ours.”

Dave Hans.

IBM wants systems engineering skills and more
IBM (Armonk, NY) designs, develops and manufactures advanced IT systems. David Hans, an IBM software development manager, notes that the company no longer uses the term “systems engineer.”

“The job has evolved,” Hans explains. “In today’s technology, these types of individuals combine a strong technical background with good communications skills and an understanding of customer needs and direction. They have a firm grasp of the business side as well.”

Hans notes that “IBM’s interest in people with the right skills is strong.”

Dr Ruthie D. Lyle of IBM: “Pervasive computing will change the culture.”

Dr Ruthie D. Lyle: pervasive computing at IBM
Ruthie D. Lyle, PhD, works for IBM (Research Triangle Park, NC). Although her title is performance analysis engineer, her work certainly involves systems engineering: it’s her responsibility to integrate hardware and software components to arrive at a “pervasive computing” solution in her product area.

IBM, she notes, is a leader in pervasive computing, which supports the integration of various devices and environments. “Pervasive computing will change the culture, and the systems engineering approach is critical to its growth,” she explains.

Lyle has been with IBM since 1999, starting as an electromagnetic compatibility design engineer. Currently she’s working with the pervasive performance analysis and test team, testing emerging products like WebSphere Portal Server. “We establish a performance baseline, identify performance bottlenecks, and do capacity planning and a lot of load capacity testing. We do this for several platforms to ensure a robust website design.”

The work she’s doing involves elements of hardware, software, platforms and operating systems. “It’s a rapidly developing technology that integrates non-traditional computing devices to give you the ability to compute from anywhere. I find it very exciting.”

Lyle holds a 1992 BSEE from Northeastern University (Boston, MA), and a 1994 MS in electrophysics from Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, NY). In 1998 she completed a PhD in EE at Polytechnic, the first black woman to do so.

While at IBM she has filed for three patents, published technical reports, made technical presentations and received numerous awards, including a 1998 NAACP Achievement Award.

Recently she was asked to make a presentation to the IBM Academy. “I spoke about the future of wireless communications. The Academy is made up of IBM Fellows, Distinguished Engineers and other senior technical people who are experts in their fields. It was quite an honor to be asked to address them,” Lyle recalls with pleasure.

Lyle also participates in MentorNet, an e-mail mentoring program for women. Last year she worked with a PhD candidate and a freshman. She has also participated in the IBM technology camp for middle-school girls at Research Triangle Park.

IBM’s Dr Lori Johnson-Payton: “My team and I manage the whole life cycle.”

Dr Lori Johnson-Payton manages projects at IBM
As a fulfillment project manager in IBM’s integrated supply chain business (Research Triangle Park, NC), Lori Johnson-Payton, PhD, uses her technical and management skills to create solutions for customers in many industries, and sometimes on a global basis. The technical issues she faces involve manufacturing, distribution, order management and pricing. Hardware, software and service solutions may be called for.

“My team and I manage the whole life cycle of the project,” she says. “First we define the requirements, then we design, develop and implement the solutions.” One recent project involved fulfillment for a large Web order: coordinating the pricing, customization and on-time delivery of a range of servers, desktops and laptops to a client with locations across the U.S.

“IBM is a great place to work,” Johnson-Payton declares. “As a team we have goals we have to reach. There’s no such thing as ‘I’ at IBM. It’s ‘we,’ and what we can do to make IBM successful.”

Johnson-Payton received a BS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia in 1991, an MSIE from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992 and her PhD in systems engineering from U VA in 1997.

In college, she did five summer internships at Hewlett-Packard locations. Systems engineering isn’t restricted to high-tech apps, however, and in 1993 she spent six months as an operations management intern at Sara Lee Hanes Corp (Asheboro, NC), researching and designing enhancements to the process of T-shirt manufacturing.

When she completed her PhD she joined IBM as a solutions and product planner for desktop systems. By 2000 she was special bids and ops program manager for desktop systems. Next she became an engineering consultant and project manager, first for peripherals, financing and services tools, and then for the bid re-engineering team. She took her fulfillment project manager position late last year.

Johnson-Payton feels she has aced some challenges as a woman and a minority. “In school I was the only African American woman pursuing a PhD in my area. Once I entered the working world there were more problems to face down. Just being a female working in worldwide roles can present some difficulties.”

Johnson-Payton is also a mentor. “Last year I mentored a Harvard grad student from France, and this year I’m working with a seventh-grade girl in Durham, NC through IBM’s MentorPlace program.

“In both cases the idea is to get women interested in technical roles, and to help them succeed there.”

D/C

– Laurel McKee Ranger is a freelance business writer headquartered in Randolph, NJ.