Ben Jordan Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

As "Chief Electrical Engineer" I get to help an exceptionally talented team create tech that will transform your electronics design flow, even with the tools you already use today.

I am a seasoned Electronics and Embedded Electronics Engineer, CID+ certified advanced PCB designer, licensed amateur radio operator (HAM) and communicator. I love to help other engineers be better PCB designers, RF designers, embedded/FPGA developers, and ECAD software gurus by teaching them all the secrets I've learned from 25+ years in the industry. I also love to help startups and enterprises in transition bring the "smart" into their smart products, from teasing out an idea into specifications and first prototype, to complete first-run production and hand-off.Last but not least I can help you market your product, by creating complete and compelling written and video content, that gets to the heart of what piques the interest of your target audience.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Defining and building a truly integrated design workflow for products with electronics inside.- ECAD portfolio product analysis- Development of long-term roadmap- Vision casting to corporate leadership- Internal Subject Matter Expertise in Directing- Customer Research and Feedback Funnel- Critical Evaluation of Product Stance and Direction of Industry & Professional Needs.

La Jolla, California, Us

La Jolla, California, Us

Altium knew in 2014 that we needed to address the "Free-to-low-cost" market segment in the EDA tools industry. This market segment until now has been languishing with shoestring and tape open-source tools or poorly implemented low cost tools. While some have been improving, the users needed a company with a track record of building powerful ECAD tools with good UI to bear on this market segment. CircuitMaker was the result of that decision though the result was NOT what was first proposed. The industry needed something that was FREE for the end user, and yet not limited in power. In 2015 we went to open beta 1 and quickly began to see the potential of free to use software and a community of creative people making things together. As the business owner of this product and the surrounding community I am thrilled to say we have grown from a rag-tag group of enthusiastic beta testers (about 15) to over 100,000 registered users, in the space of one year. With many thousands of crowd-sourced component CAD models, and open source hardware designs, the future of electronics design and invention is now within reach of more people than ever, with or without engineering expertise. Engineers from many disciplines can also now do good electronics design, by collaborating and standing on the shoulders of those who've gone before them to blaze the trail.It is a great pleasure for me to watch this unfold, and build and guide the community from a box seat.Now focussing my attention back onto the world's best, most loved, PCB electronics design software: Altium Designer. In the last 12 months I've seen dramatic changes to the product, most of which were truly market-driven for the first time in Altium's company history. The cool thing is I still get to use my personal creative talents in our marketing content while also bringing the product to market and developing the right message for the right people. It's hard work, but great to see the results!

La Jolla, California, Us

A natural progression from Product Marketing: I was asked to join Product Management, reporting directly to the CTO to work closely with Altium's R&D team on new and exciting products. Given the aggressive release timelines and prior partially completed work this is no mean feat. The role includes developing ideas and strategic direction of Altium's board level design products, bringing my years of technical support and design experience in to shed a critical light on product direction and focus. With a rapidly expanding portfolio of ECAD design products, each targeted to specific market segments, developing the product direction makes this an interesting challenge. In this role, I use my experience and market knowledge to develop user personas, product vision, and detailed functional specifications for hand-off to R&D for development.

La Jolla, California, Us

Every company must adapt to survive and thrive in this world. Traditional Madison Avenue or Ivory Tower marketing just don't cut it any more. Branding is important, and Altium has done a great job on getting the brand name out there for the last five years. But having a great brand as a "household name" is just not enough. Today's engineers and others involved in the design of electronic components have problems that need solving; in terms of design, design hand-off to production, test, lifecycle management, workflow efficiency, and not the least staying motivated and passionate about what they do. These fine people who make all our lives better through invention and ingenuity find solutions to the problems they face daily through web search, social networking, and community involvement and membership. Content Marketing is all about putting tightly wrapped solutions to specific and relevant problems out there for consumption - blogs, articles, white papers, video and face to face events all count. But they only count if they help someone. This is all about helping technologists and inventors build the future without letting the tools get in the way of their success. My hat is off, my glass is raised, to these people. And, our content team is being built to help.

Manage the technical support team, including Altium's American Application Engineers and Associates, working with the team to enhance their individual and group talents to make this company and out customer support as outstanding as our products deserve!

La Jolla, California, Us

Now, not only do I get to be creative producing videos and technical marketing material for the greatest EDA (and related) products in the world, but I also get to coach and manage others from Altium's global applications teams to produce such valuable video and online assets as our "Design Secrets" series.It's a new and interesting challenge, but we now have contributors to our famous technical instructional video series from USA, China, Germany, Australia, Japan, Korea and South America. It gives me a sense of great achievement to know so many regions, languages and Altium staff members are now working with me to produce such excellent content, and a truly global medium.

La Jolla, California, Us

A new focus on inducing customer success through:Development of platform based reference designs, production of media rich training, new marketing material, New Media, and strategic feedback into product development and testing with the customer's experience in mind.In a practical sense I have obtained some unexpected and extremely valuable experience in production in this role. As a corporate "talking head" persona I have presented in dozens of videos on the Altium web sites, in both marketing and instructional capacities. In the process of producing these videos and working with creative team members I have learned to write succinct and powerful scripts for video presentation, honed my presentation skills, and learned complex video editing techniques using the latest software (Adobe Premier Pro & CS5, and Final Cut Pro).The role is challenging and varied - at times stressful with so many technical marketing projects going on, alongside direct customer problem solving on Altium's "AltiumLive" forums, and internal coaching and training of support staff. In all, the role has an exciting blend of technical marketing, support, and R&D.

As an F.A.E. I spent most of my time travelling to larger customer sites in the USA west coast region. The majority of this role was pre-sales product demos using Altium Designer and the Nanoboard, and a growing portion of the role involved consulting services for larger Altium customers, which often incorporate customized on-site training. Some of the most notable experiences in the F.A.E. role were:- Visiting and touring the Space eXplorations factory in L.A.- Consulting with users at J.P.L.- Presenting Altium Designer as an embedded design solution to Altera, Xilinx, Actel and other high-tech manufacturers like RGB Spectrum in the S.F. Bay Area.All the activities I undertook in this role directly advanced Altium's bottom line in the USA region. In spite of the GFC, the region grew year-on-year while I was working in this role.

In addition to the existing duties of a Senior Applications Engineer, the Team Lead role involves strategic planning and leadership activities with the Senior Applications Engineers, as well as the overall support team including Applications Engineers and Field Applications Engineers. During this time I have had some freedom to brainstorm, plan and role out mentoring and coaching activities for guiding, teaching and motivating the rest of the team. Some of these activities include specific internal training sessions in Technical Pre-Sales Etiquette, Question Based Selling, Recording of online product demonstrations, and one-on-one and one-to-many coaching.

Senior customer support engineer and consultant, for complete end-to-end electronic product development using Altium Designer software. Pre-sales support and technical presentation delivery resulting directly in company growth in all US regions by up to 40% per quarter. Development of documentation, demonstration, and training materials for pre and post sales support. Direct customer coaching and training. Advising customers of creative ways of solving real engineering design challenges with programmable logic devices (FPGA/CPLD) high-speed printed circuit design, and C based embedded firmware development. Internal mentoring and on-boarding of Application Engineers and technical account managers.

Senior support and internal/external coaching role, development of reference application designs of electronic products, both hardware and software based development (PCB design, FPGA IP Core development in VHDL), support of internal R&D processes including testing and documentation.

Beng (First Class Honours), Computer Systems Engineering

Associate, Electrical And Electronics Engineering