Professional Summary
Software engineer turned hardware tester based in San Francisco. 4.5 years of experience designing and deploying hardware-software systems in real production and field environments at SRI International. Now a test specialist at Astranis, ensuring flight hardware is functional before it’s sent to space 🚀
Skills
- General Programming: Python, C++ (working), JavaScript (working), MATLAB (legacy), Bash
- Software Engineering: Codebase refactoring, version control (Git), architecture cleanup, OOP design, CI/CD (GitHub Actions), configuration-driven systems, software development lifecycle (SDLC)
- Web & Docs: documentation-as-code, technical reporting, developer-facing writing, HTML, CSS, Markdown, reStructuredText, JavaScript, Jekyll/Liquid, SOP-design, Sphinx
- Machine Learning Pipelines: Data preparation, labeling, model integration, real-time inference
- Technical Domains: Robotics-adjacent systems (ROS), signal processing fundamentals, data tooling
- Tools & Platforms: Linux, Raspberry Pis, NVIDIA Jetson kits, Cloudflare Workers
- Sensors: Cameras, microphones, IMUs, software-defined radios (SDRs)
Experience
Avionics Test Specialist
- Operate functional and performance tests on flight hardware and software.
- Test PCBA’s, subsystems, and full spacecraft over a wide range of environmental conditions, e.g., vibration, thermal vacuum, and EMI/EMC.
Research Engineer II
- Co-lead software team on a large ($11M), multi-year research program; guided code standards, Git usage, and architectural decisions across a growing Python codebase.
- Built and maintained end-to-end ML pipelines (data prep, labeling, model integration, real-time inference) for camera-based drone detection and other sensing systems.
- Interfaced with sensors and hardware — cameras, microphones, IMUs, chemistry equipment, robotic arms, software-defined radios (SDRs) — for testing and integration with software.
- Refactored and standardized legacy codebases into cleaner, more maintainable structures with more robust and user-friendly design.
- Designed and maintained SOPs, user guides, and software documentation throughout development.
- Implemented automated test infrastructure on codebases where none previously existed.
- Prepared custom hardware-software systems for customer deployment, from flashing computers with OS to installing custom software to in-lab testing before shipment.
- Acted as a technical point of contact for users: clarified requirements, answered questions, resolved issues, and translated ambiguous needs into reliable software.
- Regularly bridged communication between engineers, project leads, and customers, emphasizing usability and clarity of delivered software.
- Operated effectively in unstructured problem spaces across robotics, sensing, and signal processing, ramping quickly on unfamiliar systems.
Physics / Engineering Intern
- Prepared data and trained models for machine-learning pipelines (Python, Linux) by cleaning, labeling, and organizing acoustic datasets.
Undergraduate Researcher
- Conducted research in quantum information and space-based entanglement distribution, resulting in paper published in npj Quantum Information.
Projects
- This website: A fun project to cultivate a personal knowledge base and learn web dev.
python-docstrings-to-html: An exercise in Python docstring parsing and static site generation.- Destructive interference experiment: A demonstration of active noise cancellation with a 2-speaker system.
pitch_detector: An application to detect real-time musical pitch.
Publications
Khatri, S., Brady, A.J., Desporte, R.A. et al. Spooky action at a global distance: analysis of space-based entanglement distribution for the quantum internet. npj Quantum Inf 7, 4 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-020-00327-5
Education
Bachelor of Science, Physics
Involvement
- SRI Women in STEM Co-Chair: 2024 – 2025
- Global Game Jam: 2019, 2020 (pixel art)