ENGINEERINGHARDWARE THAT SURVIVESTHE TEST STANDAND THE MISSION.

PROPULSION & TEST STAND

As Propulsion Engineer on Nomad at the USC Liquid Propulsion Lab, I served as the Igniter Responsible Engineer for the 675 lbf regeneratively-cooled Inconel-718 metal 3D-printed liquid rocket engine & 1,000 psi MEOP cryogenic Jet-A/LOx hot-fire campaign "Hodor" — owning assembly & integration of the pyrotechnic igniter on the engine hardware and ignition sequence authority on the T-minus countdown through a campaign that enabled a record four hot-fires in a single day at RRS Mojave.

I also owned the full design-to-qualification cycle for the engine: driving requirements & architecture through CoDR, modeling the injector & thrust chamber assembly under strict DFM/DFA/DfAM constraints (cutting assembly time 35%) through PDR, validating pressure drop, flow & structural integrity at 1.5× MEOP in ANSYS Fluent through CDR, supporting in-house fabrication of high-precision components (15% cost reduction), and presenting FMEA at Test Readiness Review to raise thermal margin before hot-fire.

On the test stand I led assembly, integration, and testing (AI&T) of the full engine hardware with sensors and instrumentation, acquired and monitored real-time data, directed test stand communications and ground support equipment (GSE) logistics, solved the inverse heat-conduction problem in MATLAB from post-hot-fire thermocouple data, and presented as a key individual contributor at PDR, CDR, and TRR reviews to SpaceX and Vast experts. These efforts culminated in a record four consecutive hot-fires in under 8 hours at 93% efficiency at RRS Mojave, setting a new lab record for test cadence and proving rapid reusability and reliability of the propulsion system.

ACROSS THE HARDWARE LIFECYCLE

That same first-principles, systems-thinking approach runs through the full hardware lifecycle & extends across robotics, automation, automotive, energy & advanced manufacturing. I apply Design for Manufacturing, Assembly, Testability, Cost, Reliability & Reusability from concept through AI&T, validation & high-volume production. At STAR I led a five-person team designing & FEA-validating a cost-optimized static test stand for solid rocket motors. At Decibels Lab I sized EV battery, motor, and BMS systems and improved thermal performance 20%. At BMW and Daimler I applied DFM/DFA, design for automation and root-cause methods on high-volume fixtures & manufacturing robots in Body-in-White processes, accelerating cycle time, throughput & OEE while extending tool life. In robotics and electro-mechanical systems I led rapid prototyping and AI&T of drone charging systems, a full solar agricultural robot from chassis design through fabrication & field validation, and a robotic automation cell with custom-designed vacuum gripper that achieved 2× throughput under complete TCO analysis.

The same systems view scales to larger architectures: a two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle sized to a Saturn V-class RFP that delivered 122% higher payload at 65% lower launch cost, a lunar lava-tube robotic exploration concept architecture & lunar habitat systems mission design built to NASA standards. Earlier work also produced a patent on AI-based predictive maintenance for hybrid powertrains and an IoT-cloud healthcare monitoring publication.

WHAT'S NEXT

I'm looking to bring that same rigor — full ownership from requirements to flight-qualification hardware — to propulsion, environmental test, systems integration, mechanisms, AI&T, robotics, automotive systems, or manufacturing automation roles on a team building flight or high-reliability hardware.