Larisa Stephan Email & Phone Number

Consider bats – their short wings tailored for agile flight, their feet allowing them to hang from rocks and leaves without effort, their tails designed to scoop insects from mid-air. Mother Nature has spent millions of years refining her only flying mammals into perfect examples of efficiency and design in engineering: they do exactly what they need to do with no extraneous features, yet have the ability to evolve with their environments. As an embedded software and systems engineer my dream is to produce something that optimized – a learning machine, nimble and astonishingly resistant to infection, with built-in upgrade plans for the next generation in response to changed conditions. This dream drives me, striving with each project to come closer to nature’s perfect machine.I worked at Raytheon for 37 years. As an Embedded System Software Architect, Team Leader, and Engineering Fellow, developing software and systems for infrared remote sensing, electronic warfare, and space and airborne weapons, I’ve come to understand that there are two aspects to engineering: First, we solve problems. This often requires us to create something no one has ever done before, which is just plain cool. But the second aspect of engineering, often overlooked, is not about technical expertise. It’s about ensuring that the needs of all stakeholders – mission users, acquisition, integrators, testers, approvers and certifiers of the system, and the implementation team – are considered and synthesized into a coherent, organic whole.Engineering is inherently messy, demanding compromises among competing objectives to yield a balanced system. I love working with customers to negotiate these compromises, to determine what they actually need rather than what is assumed. And when needs conflict I help clients discover options that satisfy their real objectives and make clear recommendations for resolution, giving the customer informed agency to control the destiny of their own system.I want to architect innovative space and airborne systems that deliver customer value by building trust and setting expectations among leaders, coworkers, and customers. My job isn’t to tell you what to do, but to listen closely and help you achieve your goals in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible, leaving room for future growth.Beyond the office door, I am a wife and mom, a student of yoga and martial arts, and a native plant restoration volunteer. I’ve hiked to the summits of seven California counties leading youth outdoor programs and photographing nature for citizen science.

Listed skills include Embedded Software, Proprietary Systems, Software Safety, Infrared, and 24 others.

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  Principal Software Design Engineer Ii

  Cesiumastro

  Jul 2024 - Present - El Segundo, California, United States