I currently work at Chesapeake Technology International, a small defense contractor, as an engineer. My official title is “Associate Engineer” but I consider myself a software engineer with systems engineering tendencies. The small and distributed nature of the company allows the engineers to fill multiple roles for various programs. I may be writing real-time low level C code one day, cabling systems the next and then go back to designing and coding GUIs for another program. I have a hand in every stage of the process and in almost every aspect of the system. Hardware, software, design, implementation and integration are all aspects of my job.
Most of my time is spent on one of the company’s largest programs, EA-6B Prowler trainers. The EA-6B Prowler is an electronic warfare aircraft flown by the Navy and Marine Corps. The simulators I work on allow pilots and ECMOs (electronic countermeasures officer) to obtain flight and EW training in safe and controllable environments. Most of my work centers around the simulated flight and equipment models that control the dynamics of the aircraft. Most of this code is in C/C++ , some of which also interacts with a MYSQL database. The trainers also include stations that Instructors and Operators use to monitor, control and design the scenario being carried out by the student. I also have a hand in designing and coding the software on these machines which is mostly in C#.
There are many things I have learned working at CTI that I was never exposed to during my time in college. Before working here, a ‘large’ code base to me was about 25 files each containing a few hundred lines of code. Now I work on systems that span hundreds of files each containing thousands of lines of code which I have to navigate using vim and build using makefiles. I have also done a lot of work on low level I/O code for communicating across different types of hardware including RS-232/485 serial, TCP/UDP, 1553, ARINC 429, Reflective Memory and Shared Memory. It truly is amazing how quickly I went from being challenged by having to write the same linked list class from scratch that every CS major must do at some point or another at college to working on massive, complex systems that have real world significance. It is both scary and exciting to think that I am not even a year in to my career and that I have a lifetime of similar challenges and learning ahead of me!
Professional
I currently work at Chesapeake Technology International, a small defense contractor, as an engineer. My official title is “Associate Engineer” but I consider myself a software engineer with systems engineering tendencies. The small and distributed nature of the company allows the engineers to fill multiple roles for various programs. I may be writing real-time low level C code one day, cabling systems the next and then go back to designing and coding GUIs for another program. I have a hand in every stage of the process and in almost every aspect of the system. Hardware, software, design, implementation and integration are all aspects of my job.
Most of my time is spent on one of the company’s largest programs, EA-6B Prowler trainers. The EA-6B Prowler is an electronic warfare aircraft flown by the Navy and Marine Corps. The simulators I work on allow pilots and ECMOs (electronic countermeasures officer) to obtain flight and EW training in safe and controllable environments. Most of my work centers around the simulated flight and equipment models that control the dynamics of the aircraft. Most of this code is in C/C++ , some of which also interacts with a MYSQL database. The trainers also include stations that Instructors and Operators use to monitor, control and design the scenario being carried out by the student. I also have a hand in designing and coding the software on these machines which is mostly in C#.
There are many things I have learned working at CTI that I was never exposed to during my time in college. Before working here, a ‘large’ code base to me was about 25 files each containing a few hundred lines of code. Now I work on systems that span hundreds of files each containing thousands of lines of code which I have to navigate using vim and build using makefiles. I have also done a lot of work on low level I/O code for communicating across different types of hardware including RS-232/485 serial, TCP/UDP, 1553, ARINC 429, Reflective Memory and Shared Memory. It truly is amazing how quickly I went from being challenged by having to write the same linked list class from scratch that every CS major must do at some point or another at college to working on massive, complex systems that have real world significance. It is both scary and exciting to think that I am not even a year in to my career and that I have a lifetime of similar challenges and learning ahead of me!