Mission-critical software supporting space launch systems
The Contract
Six years (2003 to 2009) as a software engineer at L-3 Communications Systems West on the Patrick Air Force Base contract, supporting the space launch systems behind missions flying out of Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral: the Delta II era through the final years of the Space Shuttle program.
Engineering
This was heads-down systems programming: Unix and C# development on mission-critical spaceflight software, hardware integration where code met range equipment, and Oracle-trained SQL work on the data layers underneath. Software here had one standard, it works when the countdown reaches zero, and the systems I contributed to achieved 90% reliability.
The Foundation
Before I ever designed an interface, I spent six years as the engineer on the other side of one. That discipline, building for operators who cannot afford ambiguity, is the foundation under everything else on this site: I design systems I could build, and I know what the code on the other end has to do.
Unix / C#
Hardware Integration
Oracle SQL
Mission-Critical Software
