Thoughtful engineering grounded in real-world development, manufacturing, and field experience.

My engineering background is rooted primarily in medical device development, where rigorous documentation, verification, validation, reliability, and manufacturability are not optional; they are core to the development process. That environment shaped an approach to engineering centered on thoughtful design, robust systems, and careful consideration of how products function in the real world.

Over the course of my career, I have worked across a broad range of disciplines including ultra-high vacuum systems, opto-mechanical assemblies, fluidic systems, plastics joining processes, automation fixtures, and precision-machined hardware. Much of that work has involved operating in interdisciplinary teams where mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, quality, and operational considerations all intersect.

My goal is to develop concepts into manufacturable, testable, serviceable hardware while balancing reliability, schedule, fabrication realities, and long-term maintainability. My work often centers around fixture and test-system development, design for manufacturability, rapid CAD iteration, debugging, and resolving complex interface problems between subsystems and manufacturing processes.

Beyond design work itself, I have spent substantial time directly in manufacturing and assembly environments, including shop floors, cleanroom production areas, prototype assembly stations, and vendor fabrication environments. I have built and reworked assemblies personally, operated both production equipment and custom tools I designed myself, and worked closely with machinists, technicians, and manufacturing teams throughout development and production transfer efforts.

One formative experience was spending a year supporting clinical trials throughout Europe for a medical device platform I helped develop and transfer into production. That work involved daily interaction with hospital staff, biomedical technicians, physicians, and internal engineering teams while supporting systems operating in real clinical environments. It reinforced the importance of field reliability, serviceability, operator experience, and customer trust; areas that are often overlooked during development.

I value speed and iteration during early development, but I also place significant emphasis on disciplined documentation and design rigor as systems mature. In practice, that means understanding tolerance stackups, interface control, failure modes, manufacturability, inspection requirements, and validation needs early enough to avoid unnecessary downstream problems.

Cactus Lab Engineering was created as a way to bring that combination of technical depth, practical fabrication awareness, and systems-level thinking into focused collaboration with research groups, startups, and advanced manufacturing teams developing complex hardware systems.