Boeing Work Values

Daily Duties at Boeing:

For the International Space Station program (ISS), maintained real-time embedded avionics flight software components in Ada for the Space Station, specifically, within Command and Control, the Attitude Control System's Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (ACS FDIR) and Redundancy Management (RM) software components. * Used: Windows 2000, Microsoft Office, Solaris, Ada, Ada Probe For the Space Vision System (SVS) User Interface (UI) project, a system that enhanced the situational awareness of the space shuttle robotic arm and its payload, discovered hidden design constraints related to the video technology used, and took the initiative to rapid prototype the UI. * Spearheaded multiple improvements to the SVS including making operations more intuitive and task oriented; utilized user-feedback sessions to acquire consensus of requirements and drive GUI design. * Took initiative to study SVS architectural documents, schematics, and APIs to discover suspected design constraints. Team had assumed a VGA display, but it had to be readable on an NTSC video display constrained to 640x480 pixels and 16 colors due to the hardware. Overall research efforts saved the company much potentially wasted time developing GUIs based on wrong assumptions. * Held astronaut user feedback sessions (Usability Testing) to acquire consensus of needs and behavior requirements to drive the design towards more intuitive operation. * Worked closely with SVS’s creator, Neptec Inc. of Ontario, Canada to coordinate development, incorporating new features and API changes into the GUI program over four business trips. * Customized and built QNX (Real Time Unix OS or RTOS) kernels on Intel boxes and laptops. * Developed a simple but effective configuration management, bug/feature tracking and planning process system. Tailored SEI/CMMI for small projects such as SVS. * Used: Windows 2000, Microsoft Office, QNX RTOS, Photon, Exceed, C, VBA * For the multi-satellite Iridium project, helped develop and operate a "Run Time Products" (RTP) 24x7 data factory. Semi-automated the generation of Version Description Documents (VDD) for data files by developing a system of Perl scripts while learning Perl. Streamlined process and reduced RTP data run time 10-fold, by writing Perl scripts that helped to analyze log files for errors. * Used: Windows 2000, Microsoft Office, Perl, Sybase, Cygwin, ACEDB, PCMS

What they like about Boeing:

Working for a company with an emphasis on social values and helping society is a clear and important priority for you - a critical factor in who you choose to work for. In contrast to other factors, you place an organization's reputation for fairness and concern for the community above most other aspects of the company. As you search for a new job opportunity, it is usually possible to find out if the company is involved in the community and/or if it is addressing problems and issues in society. Pay special attention to non-profit organizations and those specifically involved in social action. Moreover, speaking with current and former employees should enlighten you to perceptions of the fairness of the company's leaders and the treatment of employees.

Tags

C/C, Perl, SQL, Oracle, Unix, Linux, Windows, QNX, SQL Server, Visual Basic (VBA), Visual Studio, Ada, GUI design, Database design, Rhapsody, UML, DOORS, Eclipse, shell scripting, design patterns, Full Life-Cycle, Quality Assurance, Safety Critical Systems, Avionics, GN, Distributed, Real-Time, Embedded, Systems Integration, HTML, XML, Motif, CMMI

Skills

Presentation, A probing, analytical mind, sharp eye for detail, and a heart for quality for spotting subtle flaws in various documents, artifacts, and code.

These are some of the questions we asked our climbers about their experiences with Boeing: