John Sivak

WORK EXPERIENCE

Led a team to redesign and implement a new user interface for the latest generation of industrial printers, greatly improving usability, customer outcomes, and reducing confusion.
Coordinated with several separate departments to develop and implement a suite of automated tests to assess printer health in a human-readable format, allowing pre-emptive identification of issues in the internal printer fleet and on customer machines.
Mentored and managed the work of several junior engineers, working with other managers to focus the team's work towards areas where we could have the greatest impact on the organization's goals.

Designed and built a simulation environment to streamline functional and regression tests for our physical systems, reduce engineer reliance on costly hardware, simulate new environments, and refine job cost estimates.
Designed and created a user interface for Canvas' drywall finishing robot, allowing non-technical operators to use the machine on jobsites independently, increasing both the rate of customer feedback and engineer throughput.

Conducted interviews with engineering candidates to assess technical abilities in a standardized, measurable way using a variety of interview techniques, questions, and coding challenges.

Streamlined scientist workflows by automating data gathering, organization, analysis, processing, and warehousing, saving an immense amount of time over the existing manual methods.
Built low-cost test rigs to enable measurement of new attributes, allowing teams to move quickly, save money testing, and help determine when specialized hardware purchases were warranted.
Designed and built 8 independent infrastructureless Google App Engine applications to ingest, collate, and present data to teams focusing on different aspects of the product.

Worked directly with customers as on-site support staff for Vecna's flagship robot, the QC Bot, during trials at customer sites.
Integrated low-level sensors, improved navigation performance, and developed protocols for server communication, inter-robot coordination, user interface control, and control of on-site infrastructure.
Developed the user interface used by remote support staff to monitor robots worldwide with minimal latency and respond to issues in real-time without requiring intimate knowledge of the system.