By Matt Cameron
Matt Cameron, VP Engineering
Growth is often associated with progress and success in business. As SIGMADESIGN continues to grow, the engineering services we offer continues to expand to directly benefit our clients.
When I started at SIGMADESIGN, there were only 3 Engineers on staff; all of whom were mechanical. Now we have 100+ Engineers employed, including software, firmware, electrical and mechanical. Having all these engineering disciplines under one roof gives us the confidence to tackle just about any project that is put in front of us. This increased capability has truly transformed our client base in that we are now involved in a more diverse and complex set of projects at any given time than ever before.
A Diverse Engineering Team
One of the benefits of having a range of engineering expertise in-house is that there is a magnifying effect. This means that the whole team is better because of the deeper bank of knowledge that can be tapped into. Without a wide range of engineering expertise, people sometimes try to design around a discipline and that isn’t a good thing. The work we do is better by having a wide variety of engineering disciplines, because of the collaboration and feedback that is available for project solutions. When you take into account all the segments of a project, the end result is much more complete. Diversity of the team also leads to confidence. We are able to go after a wider variety of jobs and provide exceptional results for our clients. We know we have the capability to take on any project that comes along.
Project Focus
On a recent machine development project with a couple of complicated subsystems, we engaged a team composed of 2 mechanical, 1 electrical, and 2 software/firmware engineers. The team’s deep breadth of experience, close proximity to one another and SIGMADESIGN’s purposefully open environment, all contributed to engineer interaction and this close cooperation between team members was invaluable for this project. This mode of interaction is important for many of our often fast-paced projects. Integrating complicated systems is better with a staff that works well-together and has diverse engineering skills.
Hiring Awesome Staff
Being a relatively small product development and engineering firm, it’s imperative that we hire engineers that are obviously good in their specified discipline, but are also savvy in other disciplines. For instance, we have several engineers that are top notch mechanical engineers, but also have a good understanding of software development. We strive to hire really good, well-rounded engineers that work well across the engineering spectrum. This helps us be adaptable to a wider array of client needs. Over the years we have developed a robust hiring process that has resulted in a great team of talented engineers that have both the technical competence and cultural fit integral to our company.