Marcus Gavin Email & Phone Number

Waukesha, Wi, Us

Fremont, California, Us

Team Foundation and Product Maturation: Established the validation team for the portable energy products of the newly created consumer business unit. Coordinated with other functional engineering managers to establish best practices that enable quick turn development using agile project management and a CI/CD pipeline for new product features. Identified product requirement gaps as part of thorough product validation.* Hired and expanded the team to 14 engineers split between Austin and Bangalore with the charter to ensure proper implementation of product features and sufficient regression test coverage for future releases* Grew product test coverage from an unknown amount to a quantifiable percentage by utilizing Jama to link product requirements to test cases and provide automated reports showing test coverage gaps* Budgeted for, purchased, and installed lab equipment to enable the full testing of portable energy storage products including PCBA testing, firmware QA, system level validation, environmental, and compliance testing* Served as a business unit liaison working with other business units to leverage technologies and domain knowledge already in place such as automated test frameworks and circuit designs

Richmond, California, Us

Team Growth and Management: Managed firmware and mobile apps QA teams in addition to leading the growing system integration and validation team. Created manufacturing test specifications for use in 3rd party test system development for use at contract manufacturers. Recruited heavily to expand the team using both full time hires and new contractors while managing the team budget and relationships with other internal and external development teams.* Over 2 years, grew a team of 8 team members with only 25% full-time employees to a team of 35 with 50% of the team as full-time employees and re-organized the team into 6 functional groups* Led the validation team through the COVID pandemic with personnel working remotely as well as in person with no significant impact to development efforts* Created automated development team to reduce monitoring firmware release candidate test time from 4 weeks to 1 week with 20% of the tests running nightly across all hardware variants* Utilized a new Jira project to complement dev team boards and track validation specific tasks such as building out lab infrastructure and improving test scripts* Coordinated end-to-end test efforts with the software product and database teams to fully validate product requirements

Richmond, California, Us

Ground up Test Development: As the hardware validation engineer for the newly established SunPower battery storage product team, interpreted and verified product requirements to define test requirements, establish test methodologies, and verify product data sheets.* Evaluated grid connected battery inverter capabilities such as microgrid quality, DC ripple, freq-watt behavior, PLC communications, and battery inrush to select the one that best fit the functional product requirements.* Established test logging architecture using TestRail and confirmed ability to utilize the API with python scripts for recording automated test results* Identified the need for more test bandwidth, then recruited and managed 3 validation engineers to help define and execute test suites for board and system level validation* Implemented HALT and thermal cycle testing on circuit board assemblies inside chambers to assess reliability and the need for conformal coating.

Richmond, California, Us

Efficiency Improvements and Project Leadership: Independently managed 3 test efforts targeted at reducing cost and improving test coverage. Managed test development efforts for PV array alignment and control hardware by contract manufacturer in China via test specifications, schedule development, implementation reviews, and test result analysis. Collaborated with systems integrator in Mexico to create an automated re-design of an AC photovoltaic manufacturing test system.* Evaluated NHR regenerative AC grid simulator to replace existing equipment and allow for increasing the number of units tested per tester from 16 to 24* Identified and implemented improvements for legacy AC photovoltaic manufacturing test system: identified incorrect grid power used on tester (208VAC floating leg vs. 240VAC split ), enhanced error messaging to properly identify communication failures, and properly configured hardware at the end of test* Drove 15% cost savings on controller product by depopulating unused components

Bangalore, Karnataka, In

Collaborative Framework Development:Led off-shore development teams to design and implement semiconductor validation and characterization ecosystems based on LabVIEW and TestStand and optimized for post-silicon testing. Interfaced directly with customers on-site to define requirements, validate software, and troubleshoot issues.Business Account Management:Built relationships and grew sales with key customers at major semiconductor companies in Austin and Europe including Cirrus Logic and NXP. Championed marketing efforts at NIWeek and on-line for Soliton’s services and burgeoning product offerings. Presented status and key objectives regularly at senior management review meetings and at general company meetings.* Leveraged test and measurement and software coding expertise to develop enable more efficient test development in a new domain: semiconductor validation, characterization, and product test* Led multiple software development teams ranging from 2 to 10 developers in parallel using Agile project management techniques to successfully deliver customized software solutions* Grew Austin account by extending original 5mo customer engagement to span 2+ years of continuous work, winning projects with 3 other customers, generating over $650k of revenue, and establishing a regular revenue stream* Contributed to marketing efforts by coordinating Soliton presence at NIWeek 2015-2017, developing a video for the Peek-i-Mon instrument monitoring software product, and demonstrating USB-PD test API* Twice presented at NIWeek test and measurement conference: “Improving Validation With a LabVIEW-Based Interactive Framework” (2016), “When to Trash Code: Lessons From a LabVIEW OOP Framework Refactor” (2017)

Austin , Texas, Us

Innovative Test Development:Introduced novel test techniques while developing test solutions for the cRIO/cDAQ-9x3x and the myRIO embedded controller products: Built-In Self-Test using an on-board ADC, JTAG boundary scan and processor emulation testing, bed-of-nails functional testing, synchronous parallel testing, WiFi radio verification on a product with an internal antenna, and 3-axis accelerometer testing. Refactored universal test station design to add instrumentation and support existing products as well as 3 new product lines. Technical Leadership:Served as tech lead mentoring engineers and driving business decisions on NPI products for 3 product lines. Successfully released 14 products including embedded controllers, PCI bus extension products (MXIe), and cDAQ backplanes. Fostered growth of associate tech lead in Hungary leading to his promotion to full tech lead.Internal Collaboration:Led 12 member hardware standardization team ensuring common hardware usage across test solutions. Championed cross-site effort to define and roll out test station naming convention to improve asset tracking and data mining. Served as test engineering recruiting coordinator for the University of Texas. Respected resource for embedded controller products directing sustaining efforts and failure rate reduction.

Austin , Texas, Us

Self-Sufficient Project Completion:Developed automated test solutions for over 30 embedded controller products. Expanded analog expertise with baseband test and fixture development for the vector signal transceiver. Drove sustaining efforts with manufacturing team to improve test hardware, eliminate false failures, and reduce test times.Departmental Guidance:Trusted group resource for dynamic burn-in, LVRT, and LV FPGA. Led team of 4 engineers to develop the 908x test solution. Mentored 7 new hires guiding them through the NI development process and proper test techniques. Served on cross departmental teams to standardize code design practices and GR&R methodologies. Traveled to Hungary multiple times to ensure proper test deployment and train Hungarian engineers.

Austin , Texas, Us

Effective Engineering:Defined test strategies and implemented test solutions for 19 embedded controller, data acquisition, and PCI bus extension products. Applied dynamic burn-in and highly accelerated strain screen (HASS) techniques for embedded controllers and systems. Collaborated with R&D and manufacturing to resolve firmware and communications issues with controller products. Mentored 2 new engineers in developing test solutions.

Austin , Texas, Us

Facilitate Customer Test & Measurement Applications:Started at NI as an applications engineer supporting customer projects. Specialized in FPGA and real-time applications with embedded systems. Taught courses and conducted customer visits to resolve technical challanges.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Development of System Design Skills & Leadership:Began career modeling system-on-chip architectures for embedded processors used in mobile phones. Evangelized system design methodologies across groups who adopted and used the new techniques.