JP
POWER ON SELF TEST
OPEN TO EMBEDDED ROLES
AVAILABLE FOR HIRE
PROVO, UTAH / US CITIZEN
JARED PFEIFER / EMBEDDED SYSTEMS ENGINEER

Firmware that ships, and the test rigs that keep it honest.

About two and a half years of production embedded work: C on STM32 and Microchip PIC, Python tools that make slow manual processes self-serve, and five bench fixtures that stopped defects before they reached the field. MS in Computer Engineering from BYU.

Portrait of Jared Pfeifer
PFEIFER, J.PROVO, UT
BENCH TESTED
0mo
PRODUCTION EMBEDDED WORK, APPROX
0
HARDWARE TEST FIXTURES BUILT
0mo
ON SEVERITY SLAS AT DELL EMC
0%
OF NEW UNITS SHIPPED WITH THE BATTERY RESET
PROFILE

One engineer across the whole bench.

Most embedded teams split the work three ways: someone writes the firmware, someone tests it, and someone builds the tooling around it. The last few years covered all three. At Speedhut, that meant owning production C for a custom automotive gauge line as the only firmware engineer on staff, then building the Python programmer and the validation process to go with it.

The through line is catching failure early. At LiveView Technologies, five bench fixtures caught code defects before shipment, including a speaker volume mismatch over SIP audio. At Speedhut, a legacy board revision that once took a month to recover became a self-serve task any technician could run. Reading the schematic and writing the C means test gets built around how the product actually fails, not how the spec says it should.

Before embedded, four and a half years at Dell EMC restoring business-critical enterprise storage within 1 to 3 hour severity SLAs, ranked top 3 for case volume out of roughly 20 to 30 engineers. That pressure built the habit that carries through everything since: find root cause fast, write it down, and make the fix repeatable.

WORKING PRINCIPLES

How the work gets done.

PRINCIPLE 01
Test from the failure, not the spec.
Writing the firmware and reading the schematic means fixtures get built around how the product actually breaks. That is how a speaker volume mismatch gets caught on the bench instead of in the field.
PRINCIPLE 02
Manual steps become tools.
Any process with version errors or missing files gets wrapped in a Python executable the whole team can run. Device programming, validation, legacy recovery: all self-serve now.
PRINCIPLE 03
Process where there was none.
First Bitbucket repo, first code review, first CI pipeline, first defect tracking, all stood up at a shop that had none of it. Small teams deserve real engineering discipline too.
ON THE BENCH

Three channels, one engineer.

PFEIFER JP-1001 BENCH SCOPE
RUN
CH1 FIRMWARE2V/DIV 5MS/DIV
Production C on STM32 and Microchip PIC, across FreeRTOS and bare metal, running in an estimated several thousand gauges built each year.
CAUGHT AND SHIPPED

Results that made it past the bench.

SPEEDHUT
Self-serve
A one-month recovery, made routine
Out-of-production board revisions took a month to recover. A standalone Python tool, packaged as an executable, made reflashing them a task any engineer or technician could run on their own.
LIVEVIEW TECHNOLOGIES
5 fixtures
Defects caught before shipment
Designed and built for a team of 8 to 10 engineers, the rigs flagged code defects before units left the building, including a speaker volume mismatch over SIP audio.
LIVEVIEW TECHNOLOGIES
100%
A battery reset on every new unit
Shipped onto all new units to eliminate voltage-sag restarts across a deployed camera fleet, and cited internally as saving thousands.
DELL EMC
Top 3
Case volume under severity SLAs
Ranked top 3 of roughly 20 to 30 engineers for most of a 4.5 year tenure, restoring enterprise storage within 1 to 3 hour windows, and earned the Most Ambitious award.
EXPERIENCE LOG

Five roles, one direction.

JAN 2025 TO APR 2025
VERILOG
Graduate Student Instructor, Computer Engineering
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY / PROVO, UT

Supported Verilog and digital design instruction for the undergraduate computer engineering program while finishing the MS.

  • Taught Verilog and digital design coursework for undergraduate computer engineering students.
  • Debugged student RTL designs and simulation issues in lab sessions, reinforcing HDL fundamentals.
DEC 2024 TO JAN 2025
UAV / DOCKER
Python Developer, Contract
FORTEM TECHNOLOGIES / PLEASANT GROVE, UT

A 40 hour per week contract to verify and package internal UAV tooling for customer use on counter-drone systems.

  • Cleaned up and refactored existing Python inside a live production codebase for counter-drone UAV systems.
  • Verified and packaged the tooling with Docker so end customers could install and run it independently.
JUN 2023 TO SEP 2024
SOLE FIRMWARE ENGINEER
Embedded Systems Engineer
SPEEDHUT / OREM, UT

Only firmware engineer at hire, owning production C for a custom automotive gauge line: STM32 and Microchip PIC, FreeRTOS and bare metal, in an estimated several thousand units built each year.

  • Automated device programming and validation in a standalone Python executable used across the team, removing version and missing-file errors.
  • Validated firmware on production hardware through bench testing, reference-value comparison, and manual regression passes before release; no automated suite existed.
  • Turned a one-month legacy-variant recovery into a self-serve task, restoring programming coverage for out-of-production board revisions.
  • Reduced gauge measurement instability by reworking signal filtering, sampling timing, and edge-case handling.
  • Stood up the first defect tracking, code review, Bitbucket repository, and CircleCI pipeline; owned requirements and architecture in Confluence.
  • Debugged CAN, SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, PWM, DMA, and GPIO with scope and logic analyzer, and corrected boards in Altium.
MAY 2022 TO JUN 2023
TEST HARDWARE
Software Engineer Intern
LIVEVIEW TECHNOLOGIES / OREM, UT

Built test hardware and production features for a deployed remote camera fleet, held alongside the Dell EMC role through August 2022.

  • Designed and built 5 hardware test units for a team of 8 to 10 engineers that caught code defects before shipment.
  • Shipped a battery reset function onto 100 percent of new units, cited internally as saving thousands.
  • Developed and debugged features in Python, C++, and SQL across a 13 month engagement.
FEB 2018 TO AUG 2022
MOST AMBITIOUS AWARD
Senior Data Domain TSE, Tier II
DELL EMC / DRAPER, UT

Isolated root cause and restored business-critical enterprise Linux storage under severity SLAs for four and a half years.

  • Restored service within 1 to 3 hour severity SLAs, rarely missed, across 54 months.
  • Ranked top 3 for case volume out of roughly 20 to 30 engineers for most of the tenure.
  • Authored Bash scripts and knowledge-base articles documenting recurring failure modes; kernel-level log analysis.
COMPETENCIES

The full toolbox.

Firmware & Embedded
CORE
Embedded CSTM32Microchip PICARM Cortex-MFreeRTOSBare metalReal-time systemsISRsHardware timersState machines
Interfaces & Bench
HARDWARE
CANSPII2CUARTADCPWMDMAGPIOOscilloscopeLogic analyzerProtocol analyzerMultimeterPower supplySWDST-LinkPICkitMPLAB ICDAltiumSchematic reading
Test & Validation
QUALITY
Fixture designBench testingManual regressionProduction validationReference-value comparisonDefect trackingRoot cause analysisFailure reproduction
Tooling, CI & Systems
AUTOMATION
PythonC++SQLAssemblySystemVerilogBashExecutable packagingDockerGitBitbucketCircleCIJiraConfluenceCMakeLinuxRaspberry PiOpenCVCoding standardsEnterprise storageBackup and recoveryReplicationKernel-level log analysis
INDEPENDENT WORK

The bench at home.

POWER ELECTRONICS
DC-DC boost converter
Designed, built, and validated on the bench.
WIRELESS
Bluetooth relay system
An information relay system built and bench-tested end to end.
MACHINE VISION
Gesture-controlled vehicle
A small vehicle driven by hand gestures through machine vision.
EDUCATION & CREDENTIALS

The paper behind the practice.

GRADUATE DEGREE
MS Computer Engineering
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
JAN 2021 TO APR 2025
GPA 3.5
UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE
BS Computer Engineering
Brigham Young University-Idaho, Rexburg, ID
2011 TO 2016
GPA 3.5
ADDITIONAL
Certification & Service
Scientific Computing with Python, certified
VOLUNTEER SERVICE: SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, 2013 TO 2015
PORTUGUESE + SPANISH, CONVERSATIONAL
GET IN TOUCH

Hiring for firmware, test, or tooling? Start here.

Based in Provo, Utah, and open to embedded test and validation, device automation, and firmware roles. The fastest way to reach Jared is email; LinkedIn works too.