Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1505694
58 PCB007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2023 their feedback. I'm grateful that I got to have classes where I was out in the shop working on mills, lathes, and learning how they work. Now that I'm working here at Stratos, I understand better what the manufacturers are doing, and I can ask them better questions, too. Tell me about the soft skills you've found to be most valuable. Park: A big part of what my college instructors wanted to convey that I now find really valu- able is being able to communicate with who- ever is going to be manufacturing your product and even explore scenarios where you were in the manufacturer's shoes. We had a long design class where we did our own design that we passed off to another student to build. But then we also received a design from someone else, built it ourselves, and iterated back and forth. e emphasis was on being able to effectively communicate with an employer or a coworker, or even another company that's manufacturing a product for you. Further to that, I now ask a lot of questions at Stratos. Being able to articulate information and avoid any sort of miscommunication or misunderstanding has been a very important lesson for me. So, Austin, you're reinforcing Aaron's point of communication and collaboration. Austin Alley: Yes, figure out who your customer is. In the end, our customer is whoever is going to buy the airplane. As an engineer, my cus- tomer is the person who will make the parts I design and draw, and the person turning the wrenches. I'm out talking to the machinist, for example, asking how they need me to make a design for manufacturing. "Oh, you need that radius changed?" A lot of engineers don't even ask what the radius needs to be. But if you ask, it's like, "Well, if you change this by ten thou- sandths, I can use this other drill bit and I can cut this twice as fast." Little details like this are sometimes missed, whereas when you really talk to the person building it, you'll learn their needs and it'll save them a lot of time in manu- facturing. John, I understand you're five years into your career, and you've made some advancements here. This sounds like a fast path for you. What's your title now, and what do you do? John Smoker: I'm our lead flight test engineer. I also do systems design work. Most of what I do currently is mid-level program manage- ment, coordinating with contractors and sup- pliers, working on timelines, and then work- ing with the actual data coming off the aircra. I learn from our chief test pilots and from the pilot contractors that we work with. Oen- times, because we're working in such a fast- paced environment, we're jumping between programs. We've developed a soware sys- tem here at flightline to manage configuration and control the aircra; that's a huge thing. To manage weight and balance briefs debriefs, just making it so that you get the most infor- mation out of a very information-rich environ- ment and coordinating it and calling it in such a way that two months down the road, we're in a completely different program. What do you know, what did we learn? What was your first role here? Smoker: I started as a low-level drasman and spent a lot of time just talking to the machin- ists and fabricators, picking their minds, asking what they want to see on drawings, what does it take to actually build the part, do this thing, or make this system. I spent a lot of time learn- ing the grammar of how to make stuff. I would say that would probably be one of the better investments that I've made in my career. You're echoing what both Austin and Aaron had said, the importance of communication between your internal customers, who you're handing your work off to. Smoker: Absolutely, because they [internal cus- tomers] are the ones who matter. It's not about just throwing a stack of drawings on their desk