Hey, I'm Jacob

and this is my story.

Hey. I'm Jacob. If I had to sum up my personality and motivations in a short description, I would tell you this: I am a problem solver. I graduated in 2016 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering with the goal of becoming a designer. With a few years of automation systems design under my belt, I moved back into the familiar territory of R&D, this time in the world of Aerospace.

I had originally gone into Mech. Eng. because I thought it would put me into a position to solve the problems at the cutting edge of what humanity is capable of. Only, as the years went by and I learned more, I realized time and time again that the cutting edge requires computation at increasingly demanding scales. I began to realize that I needed a new set of skills. So I followed the technology and put my previous experiences and design capabilities to work to pursue software engineeering and explore solutions to big problems.

As the pandemic hit and layoffs happened, I took the opportunity to build something. I hadn't programmed anything serious in several years, but nevertheless, I pushed through the sea of things I didn't know and prototyped a real estate app in excel, written in visual basic. My love for programming was rekindled, and after deciding that I wasn't skilled enough to build the real estate app the way that it needed to be done - as a web app- I began to teach myself web development full time.

If you would like to read more about my thoughts on the benefits and challenges of Mechanical-to-Software crossover, read here.

Here's a bit of resume for those interested. Full resume is available upon request.

Professional Experience

Programming & Web Dev

• 2 years full-time experience as a self-employed developer at Hyperion Web, a digital marketing firm that I started.

Miscellaneous Web Design and Programming projects since 2017 as a side interest. All of them failures. I learned a lot!

Designed and programmed Arduino microcontroller systems for senior engineering project, which was an ambitious diver propulsion vehicle.
Mechanical Design

Even though my focus is software now, I find quite a lot of value in the overlap of Mechanical Design and Software Design. I list some of my accomplishments here in light of this, and I hope you see the value in them also.

• 3 years designing and developing electro-magnetic induction tooling for Boeing and Department of Energy.
  Designed and managed magnetic high-strength armor forming experiment and fixture development.
• 1.5 years designing automation and conveyor systems in the dairy industry.

Publications

2 Published Papers on Identification of Noise Sources for Toyota:
Road Tests of the Acoustic Loads on the Back Panels of a Pickup Truck
Vehicle Wind Noise Measurements in a Wind Tunnel with a Contoured Top Profile