Contract & consulting · Remote or on-site from Louisville, KY
Embedded firmware and electronics, from prototype to regulated production.
7+ years shipping firmware and electronics across automotive infotainment, industrial test instrumentation, and IEC 62304 / ISO 13485 medical-device sensing hardware. Hands-on engineering plus experience directing engineering strategy for teams that need more than one pair of hands.
Services
Engagements are scoped to your project, from a focused review to full ownership of a subsystem.
Firmware Development
End-to-end firmware for Arm Cortex-M, ESP32, STM32, and RISC-V targets. RTOS or bare-metal, device drivers, BLE, WiFi, MQTT, and CAN, taken from first prototype through production release.
Electronics & Hardware
Schematic review, component selection, circuit design, power management, and sensor integration in Altium or KiCad, with bring-up and debug on oscilloscopes and logic analyzers.
Verification & Regulatory Readiness
Design verification and validation, test fixture design, root cause analysis, DFMEA, and design controls for regulated products, including IEC 62304 and ISO 13485 environments.
Fractional Engineering Leadership
Technical strategy, build-vs-buy evaluation, and release and roadmap management for teams that need direction as well as implementation.
Case Studies
Connected Medical-Device Sensing
Wicked Technologies · Mar 2026 to present
Leads engineering for a connected smart-textile sensing platform, wearable and bedding sensor hardware with hub connectivity, used in care-facility environments.
- Directed the response to a critical in-field firmware regression, coordinating an emergency release rollback and remediation plan that protected deployed units across 4 care facilities from a data-loss failure mode.
- Led a build-vs-buy evaluation for the connected hub's connectivity architecture that informed a roadmap decision to build hardware variants for existing deployments and new products.
- Owns design-control and QMS work for a Class II, 510(k)-exempt medical device, and leads deployment reviews with major care-facility customers.
Automotive Infotainment & Sensing
Radio Sound · Dec 2019 to Mar 2026
Designed, built, and tested embedded firmware and electronics for automotive sensing and infotainment systems end-to-end, from early prototypes through production.
- Real-time sensor integration, CAN bus communication, BLE/IoT features, and signal processing on Arm and Tensilica-based microcontrollers.
- Developed system-level integration enabling real-time vehicle monitoring and media features across 3 production platforms.
- Designed verification tests that reduced the manufacturing failure rate by 98%.
Regulated R&D Test Instrumentation
Electrolux · Aug 2018 to Apr 2020
Designed and built custom test fixtures and data-acquisition systems for product validation and long-term reliability testing in a regulated manufacturing environment.
- Reduced test setup time by 4 hours a day with custom fixtures and data-acquisition systems.
- Root cause analysis and risk assessment fed back into product redesign, including a material and vendor change that cut the coffee product line's failure rate by 48%.
- Contributed to compliance sign-off on 5 product releases.
Skills
Firmware & Embedded Systems
C/C++, Python, RTOS & bare-metal, ESP32, STM32, Arm Cortex-M, RISC-V, Arduino, Altera/Xilinx/NIOS FPGAs, SPI/I2C/UART/ADC, device drivers
Electronics & Hardware
Schematic review, component selection, analog/digital circuit design, power management, sensor integration & signal conditioning, PCB tools (Altium/KiCad), oscilloscopes, logic analyzers
Connectivity & Systems Integration
BLE / BLE Mesh, WiFi, MQTT, CAN bus, IoT architecture, sensor-to-cloud data pipelines, AWS IoT
Verification, Quality & Regulatory Compliance
Design verification & validation (V&V), test fixture design, root cause analysis (5-Why, Fishbone, 8D), risk assessment / DFMEA, design controls, QMS documentation, Class II (510(k)-exempt) medical device compliance
Engineering Leadership & Delivery
Technical strategy & build-vs-buy evaluation, release/roadmap management, cross-functional stakeholder communication, project ownership from requirements to delivery, Agile/Scrum, Git, CI/CD
About
My path into electronics started at 7, taking apart radio-controlled cars to see how they worked, and continued through my high school's electronics club and the College Now program.
I hold a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Technology-Computers from DeVry University (2019, ABET-certified) and a Master's in Electrical Engineering, Embedded Systems, from the University of Colorado Boulder (2024), earned while working full-time.
Before that, I spent two years in hands-on electronics/hardware technician roles, commercial HVAC controls and high-volume repair diagnostics, that built the foundation for everything since.
Since 2019 I've worked across automotive infotainment firmware, regulated R&D test instrumentation, and now engineering leadership for a connected medical-device sensing platform. Specifics are in the case studies above.
Have a project that needs embedded firmware, electronics, or systems engineering support?
Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck.
caleb@hipr.techLouisville, KY · Remote or on-site
