santa barbara, ca •
Current Work
Electrical Engineer @ Yonder
In 2024, while completing my degree at UC Santa Barbara, I joined Yonder part-time as an engineer. Yonder is a startup focused on discovering new materials using an autonomous, high-throughput electrochemistry platform, combining custom hardware, software, and AI-driven analysis to generate real experimental data at scale.
As the company grew, my role expanded significantly. Today, while continuing my coursework part-time, I manage Yonder's hardware team, leading the design, development, and deployment of the hardware and software infrastructure that supports our experimental systems.
Hardware
A major component of my work at Yonder has been designing high-speed mixed-signal hardware for production use. I've developed CMOS microelectrode arrays and designed the associated interface PCBs, with a strong emphasis on signal integrity, low noise, low leakage, and reliability in a lab. Through this work, I've become highly proficient in PCB design using Altium, with additional experience in KiCad.
In parallel with board-level design, I've led silicon-level development using Cadence, working on CMOS-powered microelectrode arrays tailored for electrochemical experimentation. These microelectrode arrays are the first to be useful for general electrochemistry, prioritizing signal integrity for a large list of analog waveforms in positive and negative voltage domains.
Software
Supporting the hardware stack, I've designed and implemented the software and firmware systems that control experiments end to end. This includes writing embedded firmware for the microcontrollers on our custom PCBs, handling low-level device control, timing-critical operations, and communication with hosts.
Above the firmware layer, I've developed lab control APIs and backend services primarily in Python, with performance-critical components implemented in C and Rust where appropriate. These systems manage concurrent experiments, interface with measurement instrumentation, and orchestrate robotics, imaging, and data acquisition.
Results are pipelined directly into Yonder's central data infrastructure through a tightly integrated ORM layer, enabling downstream analysis and use in AI-driven materials discovery. I've also contributed to user-facing tools that allow researchers and customers to monitor experiments, visualize processed data, and track progress in real time.
Leadership
As hardware lead, I coordinate a multidisciplinary engineering effort, setting technical direction, managing timelines, and running weekly meetings to track progress and resolve blockers. We collaborate across hardware, software, chemistry, and data teams to align the technology with overall company goals.
I also regularly travel on behalf of Yonder, including frequent trips to Austin and Seattle, where I meet with clients, partners, and collaborators. In these settings, I represent the company in technical discussions, support deployments, and make sure our systems meet real-world operational requirements.
Takeaways
Working at Yonder has given me hands-on experience building end-to-end systems that operate on real hardware, under real constraints. I've developed deep practical skills in PCB design, CMOS and device-level engineering, embedded firmware, and systems software, and I've learned how to move complex ideas from concept to production-ready tools.