Nate Fisher Email & Phone Number

Atlanta, Ga, Us

Atlanta, Georgia, Us

- Directed the development and delivery of safe, reliable, and high-performance avionics systems, ensuring compliance with stringent safety and reliability standards.- Hold Secret-level clearance, enabling oversight of classified projects and sensitive systems.- Defined strategic direction for system architecture, application development, and automated testing frameworks for embedded systems in C/C++.- Oversaw the development of all software, culminating in significant milestones, including successful test points that exercised critical system components: the ground control station, redundancy and failover mechanisms, high-speed ground operations, and remote control of the vehicle via satellite communications.- Reorganized a monolithic GNC/software team into agile, cross-functional units, improving collaboration, autonomy, and delivery efficiency.- Mentored and developed emerging leaders, aligning individual strengths with organizational needs and fostering a culture of continuous leadership growth.- Spearheaded cultural transformations to clarify roles, delegate accountability, and empower team leads to take ownership of outcomes.- Managed team budgets and headcount planning, optimizing resource allocation to meet project milestones effectively.- Enhanced recruiting pipelines, accelerating onboarding timelines to hire 15 engineers in six months, while implementing processes that improved candidate sourcing and evaluation.

Mountain View, California, Us

-Designed and implemented a fully automated Required Navigation Performance (RNP) system for the Wisk Gen6 vehicle, leveraging expertise in embedded systems (C/C++) and aviation standards.- Integrated industry standards such as RTCA/DO-283B, ARINC 424-21, and RTCA/DO-236C, along with operational insights, to develop innovative navigation capabilities for the Gen6 Concept of Operations (CONOP).- Authored technical documentation and formal communications with certification authorities (issue papers), providing detailed rationale and descriptions of the navigation technology to support compliance and certification.- Developed and tested system models using model-based engineering tools (Matlab/Simulink/Embedded Coder), ensuring robust implementation of navigation algorithms and system functionality.- Led requirements engineering activities, including elicitation, validation, traceability, review, and configuration management, to align software features with stakeholder needs and certification requirements.

Mountain View, California, Us

- Strategic Collaboration and Networking: Established formal networks with key decision-makers across the organization to drive alignment on technical objectives and priorities.- Avionics Architecture Leadership: Directed a cross-functional team to conceptualize and define a robust avionics architecture for autonomous systems, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and technical requirements.- Process and Deliverable Management: Organized and managed team efforts to develop and present comprehensive deliverables for a critical design review gate, achieving key project milestones.- Partnership Development: Led the evaluation and selection of avionics partnerships by conducting an extensive market survey, representing the organization in external engagements, and crafting a partnership strategy delivered on schedule.- Comprehensive Program Ownership: Oversaw technical, schedule, and budget aspects of avionics product delivery, steering the team through progressive design reviews to mature system models, requirements, architecture, and verification strategies for a fully autonomous avionics system tailored to an eVTOL platform.

Mountain View, California, Us

- Responsible for leadership of the overall software organization.- Main contributions included department budgeting, resource planning, team structuring and team capability development.- Interfaced with product leads and external stakeholders to ensure the software engineering demands of Wisk's development strategy are met.

Mountain View, California, Us

- Launched and managed an Atlanta-based satellite office, adding an east coast engineering center to Wisk's footprint. - Responsible for the execution of all RTCA/DO-178C software development, verification and validation activities, in support of regulatory compliance for the Wisk Cora aircraft.- Recruited and managed a team of avionics software engineers. Developed resourcing plans, culture and milestone strategies for the success of our overall team objectives.- Performed people management duties (1:1s, coaching, tasking, performance and goal review, promotions) as well as project management (effort estimation, resourcing, planning and tracking).- Ensured successful completion of stage-of-involvement (SOI) audits in order to demonstrate adherence to the applicable objectives in the RTCA/DO-178C standard.- Support an industry working group (RTCA SC-228) for the development of a technical standard for unmanned systems detect and avoid systems, RTCA/DO-365B (MOPS, UAS Detect and Avoid).

Mountain View, California, Us

- Real-time software design and development of onboard flight control computer functions for Cora (www.cora.aero), such as communications and navigation; This work included development of software (in C) targeting an application-class processor, software to support HIL/SIL simulators and also python-based code generation tools- Contributed to, authored or served as SQA for PSAC/SDP/SVP, Software/Design/Requirements Standards and processes for a civil type-certification project using RTCA/DO-178C as a means of compliance- Participated in RTCA SC-228 (MOPS, UAS Detect and Avoid) and SC-147 (ACAS X) for company awareness - Engaged third-party vendors for products and services, such as TCAS and GBSAA RADAR for detect and avoid capability- Investigated and resolved INS/GPS anomalies found during flight test - Developed CONOPS for a flight management system to be implemented for an autonomous electric VTOL aircraft, operated in civil airspace

- Real-time systems design, including requirements definition, software architecture and modeling, software implementation and verification- Software optimization for deeply embedded systems- Processor, memory and sensor component selection for performance/cost/power optimization- Electrical system rapid prototyping, first article debug and bring-up- Bare-metal and RTOS-based firmware development (in C) for ARM Cortex-M processors- Implemented solutions with RTOS kernels such as FreeRTOS and TI DSP/BIOS- Experience with symbolic debugging, tracing and code instrumentation for diagnosis of real-time issues- System design using DMA, CMOS sensors (Omnivision OV5640/2), I2C, SPI, USB, PMIC, Lithium Batteries, UART, WiFi (Broadcom BCM43362), GSM (SIM900), Bluetooth Classic and BLE (Broadcom BCM20737 + STM32 host), ASIC audio codecs, external SRAM and external Flash storage- Design, schematic capture and PCB layout/routing design (Altium Designer), manufacture, assembly and DFM optimization analysis, such as BOM item reduction- Contributed to internal and client-facing technical and strategic brainstorming sessions regularly- Organizer and technical mentor for several hardware hackathon events

Charlotte, North Carolina, Us

- Developed C++ avionics navigation software, in compliance with DO-178B process, interfacing the display unit and flight computer to initiate air-to-ground datalink communications- Resolved TCP/IP network communications issues with an on-board data management unit by packet analysis using Wireshark- Developed and led an Agile Test Driven Development deployment strategy within a legacy code-base- Negotiated and developed the communications protocol requirements between Flight Management and Displays working groups- Developed tools in Ruby to automate code review auditing for compliance to software certification guidelines- Coordinated the development of the required time of arrival, secondary flight plan and data management unit interface functions on the Boeing 747-800, Embraer E170, Dassault Falcon 7X and Gulfstream G650 programs- Participated in SOI2 audit with FAA and EASA representatives for FMS software (DO-178B, Level B)

- Developed two video processing applications using MATLAB and OpenCV (C++) which automated foreground extraction, feature detection and spline generation- Led system transition planning for a Verizon Wireless digital assets repository, servicing thousands of commercial users, to improve performance, scalability, security and maintainability- Engineered software utilizing OO, MVC and multi-threading concepts; Configured and managed applications using Linux servers- Oversaw configuration management using Subversion; Programmed custom Perl and Bash shell scripts to support continuous integration

- Performed acquisition consultation for C-level executives and organizations seeking the sale or purchase of executive transport aircraft; Utilized knowledge of C208B, Lear 45XR and King Air 90/B200 systems, alongside timely market information, to appraise assets, as well as facilitate modification, ferrying, training and service required during any phase of the transaction- Secured 10 listing agreements comprised of $20M in assets over 2 years; Responsible for full account lifecycle (business development, contract negotiation, budgeting, sales, transaction handling)- Mediated all aspects of aircraft pre-purchase negotiation including inspections, logistics, and purchase contracts to ultimately close over $15M in aircraft sales and services

Syracuse, Ny, Us

- Assisted in prototype development of a wireless, airport terminal-area aircraft sensor system (multilateration) using 900MHz radios in a mesh network. Tested RF integration of GPS, Communication and 1090MHz aircraft transponder radios.- Managed vendor relationships and secured infrastructure services for system deployment (Leased data lines to airport test facilities)

Savannah, Ga, Us

- Engineered flight test plans on four aircraft and charted on-board data recording systems- Participated in FAA certification and flight testing of Air Data Computers and EGPWS avionics for G450 and G550 aircraft- Developed automated Unix-based tools for the creation of flight test data plots