What is your actual job?

[ChrisK88]

Hey everyone,

I have been browsing the forums (without registration) for years and years, and finally decided to join a few years back. Just recently I started contributing to try to help spread the knowledge I have learned. Seeing many of you CLAs and Champions post frequently, made me wonder, hmm what does everyone actually do for employment that they get to use LabVIEW consistently.

So forgive me if this has already been a thread, but if not, if you don't mind posting your job title, I think it could be interesting to see the diversity (or lack there of) of jobs.

Me: 

B.S. Electrical Engineering from Florida

First discovered LabVIEW in an elective lab in college

LabVIEW Years Using:

6

Previous: Sr. Electrical Engineer

Used LabVIEW and TestStand at a large corporation that makes commercial and military avionics products for automating testing of Acceptance Testing and Environmental Testing

Current: Electrical Engineer

Using LabVIEW and TestStand at government contractor large corporation for developing Hardware Abstraction Layer and automating RF characterization of cellular products.

Cert:

I refused to pay for certs and finally convinced my last employer to pay for a bunch of us to take the CLAD to start, so I have that and taking the CLD in the next few months.

[Hooovahh]

What is this a job interview?  

B.S. Electrical Engineering from Kettering University (GMI) Michigan

Started a co-op at 18 with VI Engineering where it is used for making custom test systems for aerospace, consumer electronics, automotive, biomedical, etc.  LabVIEW and NI are the core business at VIE, so I learned a lot.  Focused a lot on reuse design, and writing code, and architect code for team development.  Also got a lot of experience in CAN, FPGA, TestStand and vision systems. 

Changed jobs to a large automotive supplier where I wrote test software for ED, DV, PV level validation, controls for dynos, and other engineering environmental level tests.  Still with focus on reuse and team development.

Now I test large batteries, for long term testing, and production level equipment, involving RT, PXI, cDAQ, CAN, LIN, and high power equipment on a somewhat large scale.  We have something like 300 channels of testing going on at any time.

I got my CLAD at VIE, got my CLD at the automotive company (along with Champion status) and got my CLA at my current job.  If you go to various NI events they sometimes give away discounts on certification and I actually took my first CLAD, and CLD for free as in no cost to me or my employer.  I'm so glad I've been able to find work in a field I enjoy, and can do it full time.  Been doing LabVIEW pretty much daily for 12 years.

[ChrisK88]

No job interview, just curiousity to see how many EEs vs CS majors 😉 

We had VIE come do a presentation for us at my previous employer to help us offload some work. Unfortunately did not pick them and found a local software house. 

I will now plan on attending your session at this years NI week, I see XNodes frequently when I lurk on LAVAG and never really dug into them. I look forward to meeting you Hooovahh!

-Chris

[Jacobson-ni]

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@ChrisK88 wrote:

just curiousity to see how many EEs vs CS majors 😉 

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Us Mechanical Engineers can be taught too, even if it takes us a little longer.

I have to admit that my signature isn't entirely accurate, I'm an Applications Engineer here at NI so I could be the person you are talking to when you decide to call or email NI for help. 

[crossrulz]

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ChrisK88 wrote:  I look forward to meeting you Hooovahh!

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I look forward to finally meeting him as well!

Spoiler

At NI Week 2014, Hooovahh and I were both excited to finally meet each other only to discover we had dinner together the year before.

As for myself:

BS Electrical Engineering from University of Cincinnati (OH)

MS in Electrical Engineering from Wright State University (Dayton, OH)

Discovered LabVIEW as a co-op at the company I ended up working at for 8 years.  Been doing LabVIEW for almost 12 years now.

I got my CLAD after about 2 years of LabVIEW just for myself.  I was the first in the company to do it.  2.5 years later, got my CLD and then another 2 years later got my CLA (right before my final quarter in grad school).

I see myself at a Test Engineer, mostly for electronics.  But lately I have been doing a lot of embedded control using cRIO.

[BowenM]

Engineers everywhere...

I got my BS in Physics.  I started using LabVIEW to control a pulse power accelerator and misc. scientific equipment. And yes, I overused stacked sequence structures and local variables like mad 🙂  I worked there all through college and a couple years after as a research assistant.

I then got a job as a controls engineer in aerospace. This was ~3 years ago.  At the time I was hired, I'd just barely learned about dataflow programming.  I got all of my real knowledge basically browsing these forums, reading responses and answering questions. Within the last 2 years I've focused a lot of time on learning proper programming practices (not just LabVIEW - across the board) and working to develop real scalable architectures instead of what just works.

Last year at NI week on a whim I took the CLAD.  I passed it and the next day took the CLD - passed that (crossrulz helped me out a LOT by resopnding to a post on the certification section mid NI week. I think I would have failed the documentation section without it).  Looking at the CLA I think I could pass it, but haven't had the chance to test yet.

[nathand]

BS Chemical Engineering, minor in Computer Science. I started using LabVIEW in college, when the instructor who ran the undergraduate chemical engineering lab saw that I had an interest in programming and offered me a summer job. He had an old torque rheometer (for measuring properties of plastics as they melt), the original no-longer-functional control system, LabVIEW, and a bunch of FieldPoint units, and he basically said "see what you can do with this."

My first job out of college was a typical entry-level ChemE job testing pilot-plant-scale chemical reactors. All the code running them was written in LabVIEW and after a while I got comfortable enough to make changes myself without asking our resident programmer. A few years later when he left I moved into his job. I've had a succession of jobs in different industries since then, with LabVIEW as the common thread although not always my primary responsibility. In addition to LabVIEW I've done a lot of integration of laboratory instruments, and some embedded C programming.

Right now my business cards say "Sr. Software Engineer" and I'm writing LabVIEW (mostly RT and FPGA) for control of large-scale battery systems. I'm more on the power electronics side but I like learning about the electro-chemistry aspects as well.

I haven't found that I needed any NI certification to get a job, although I'll take the exam if I ever have an employer that will pay for it.

[Gregory]

I received a BS and MS in Optical Science, which is basically a mixture of the physics and engineering of light. I had a semester of MATLAB programming, but not much formal software training at all. 

Started using LabVIEW 5 years ago for an internship and hated it. Started using it again 2 years ago and thought it was ok. Then I took the core 3 class and suddenly so much more just made sense.

My previous job was an optical engineer but I started to find myself given a lot of test / automation projects since not many people there did programming. My new job is as an optical test engineer, so this time I was actually hired to do LabVIEW. They use TestStand a lot here as well, so I am just learning that. (Although the way they use it is almost like a programming language, not just a sequencer, so I may have my work cut out to convince them to leave the programming to LabVIEW).

I got the CLAD and CLD very close to each other. I was a little mad that my employer hired a CLD contractor to build a system that I was left to debug, so that's when I started looking at certification myself!

[srm@viewpointusa.com]

BSME/EE Kettering University. (GMI)

Left GM shortly after graduation for a software engineering job for technical software

Start our company 5 years after that.  Been doing LabVIEW for 24 years.

I stopped chasing the ever changing certificaiton trail early 2000's

while i am management (partner), i manage to stay engaged technically in many aspects of our work.

FPGA breathed new life into our ability to delivery applicaitons.

[Ben]

I am one of the Senior Automation Systems Architects at Data Science Automation.

I was  non-conventional student that earned my BS in Engineering Physics at the age of 41 and went directly from working in the Physics labs at U Of Pitt to here 17 years ago.

Prior to college I worked for the US Navy that thought I would be better off fixing computers than my first choice

Spoiler

(which was to be a SEAL. The Assignment officer that reviewed my tsting said "That's nice Ben but you can do math, you are going to fix computers.")

I moved from there to Diebold Inc (because computers were running cash machines) and then to Digital Equipment Corporation that trained me to fix everything from a mainframe to a PC and all of the widgets that you could wire up the them.

With an extensive work experience in electronics, formal eduacation in Physics, Material Science, EE having been forced to use LabVIEW at U of Pitt, it was a natural place for me to land where I spend my time talking to scientist and engineers and training computers to jump through hoops using LabVIEW.

Ben