Justin Rogers (2004)

It's hard to believe that over three years have passed since I graduated. I often think back to the classes I had and realize how much they have helped set the stage for the work I do now. I am currently the lead engineer for the military avionics program, and I don't know if the Lord could have placed me anywhere more enjoyable. In fact, having the title Systems Engineer, I'm rather proud that I haven't written a single line of code since I graduated. I suppose I've been focusing on the 'Systems' side of the Computer Science / Systems degree!

The business area of Rockwell Collins (no longer a part of Big Rockwell) performs integration and software development for Army Helicopter cockpits. Basically we put the smarts in the aircraft. The end product is known as CAAS , or Common Avionics Architecture System . In particular, I'm a Platform Systems Principal Engineer - which roughly means that I'm responsible for the high-level design and integration testing of the system. I have a team of about 8 to help me do this; the overall team (which includes implementation / software engineering) is of course much larger. This is your standard systems design role - my team is the primary interface to the customer, is responsible for requirements capture and definition, flow-down of those requirements to the sub-system teams and software engineers, managing the integration, and then ensuring that the end product coming back is what we had intended.

The specific platform that I'm responsible for is the Army's new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, or ARH. You may have seen it in the news recently, Bell Helicopter (the Prime Contractor for the program) has had (and continues to have) some difficulties. It's interesting when you could watch funding and budgets for some of your programs be debated on C-SPAN. Before my current position, I also worked in different capacities on many other programs. Rockwell Collins over the past couple of years has won contracts to put the CAAS on most all army helicopters, so there is certainly no lack of work.

The job itself is rather fun, I've had a fine amount of travel and I very much enjoy working with the military. I've even had opportunities to fly aboard MH-47s (Chinooks) and MH-60s (Blackhawks) with the 160th SOAR - the guys in Blackhawk Down.