Mechanical Design Engineer

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer — Vanguard Robotics Group

Pittsburgh, PA | August 2023 – Present

• Designed and modeled 4 structural chassis assemblies for high-payload industrial robotic arms using SolidWorks, reducing overall material weight by 14.5% while maintaining structural safety factors above 2.0.
• Conducted structural finite element analysis (FEA) using ANSYS to optimize casting geometries, preventing potential fatigue failures and reducing physical prototype testing cycles by 35% over a 12-month period.
• Supervised the migration of CAD and engineering documents to a new Windchill PLM system, improving engineering change order (ECO) release times by 28% and ensuring compliance with ASME Y14.5 dimensioning standards.
• Coordinated with overseas manufacturing vendors to apply Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) guidelines, saving $112,000 in annual tooling costs and reducing assembly errors by 18.2%.

Mechanical Design Engineer — Apex Precision Instruments

Erie, PA | August 2020 – July 2023

• Developed opto-mechanical enclosures for aerospace sensors, managing tolerances down to ±0.02 mm to prevent optical misalignment and achieving a 100% pass rate on environmental thermal shock tests.
• Created detailed engineering drawings utilizing geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) to align with ISO and ASME standards, decreasing drawing rejection rates in production by 24%.
• Optimized sheet metal and injection-molded part designs for mass production, lowering component unit manufacturing costs by 12.3% and saving $45,000 in raw material expenditures annually.
• Collaborated with electrical engineering teams to design thermal management systems and heat sinks, reducing critical processor operating temperatures by 8.5°C under maximum workload conditions.

SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, FEA, CFD, GD&T, ASME Y14.5, DFMA, Injection molding, Sheet metal design, Tolerance stack-up analysis, ANSYS, PDM, Windchill, Thermal management, Rapid prototyping

Robotic Joint Actuator Development

Role: Lead Mechanical Designer

Tools: SolidWorks, ANSYS, Windchill

Led the structural and thermal design of a high-torque robotic joint actuator, reducing joint backlash by 15% and prototype build cost by $18,000.

Thermal Management System Redesign

Role: Mechanical Engineer

Tools: SolidWorks Flow Simulation, ANSYS Fluent

Redesigned custom heat sinks and fan ducting for a sealed outdoor telecommunications enclosure, lowering internal component temperatures by 11.2°C.

• Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) (2021)
• Engineer in Training (EIT) (2020)

• Languages: English (Native), German (Conversational)
• Volunteer Work: Mentor for local high school FIRST Robotics team (2021–present)
• Availability: 2 weeks notice