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Damen Toomey is an electrical hardware design engineer at GE Critcal Power. On this episode of “Gigs,” we find out what that means, what it takes to do the job and what advice he would give to those aspiring to do what he does.
The heart of what he does, Toomey says, is design, develop and debug power supplies.
“I go into the lab, turn on the power supplies, the loads, the oscilloscope, turn on my laptop and begin testing,” Toomey said of his typical day. “I have a rectifier I’m working on … so testing the switching waveforms to see if we’re meeting our stresses and making sure we’re below or meeting our derating guidelines. I work with cross-functional teams including project and product management, mechanical, component and software engineers and make sure we make the customer happy.”
As one would expect, Toomey has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering with power and energy systems focus, but to get ahead he also attended four, six-month rotations in Edison Engineering Development Program, which he says was critical to his success.
The curriculum takes students through a full range of engineering problems, starting simply and expanding in complexity as the courses move forward. “I started with a simple buck converter and then I went up to DC-to-DC isolated, full-bridge center tap design, so larger product, more complex and then I went to component engineering, which is the individual components in that design and I went up to AC-to-DC rectifiers, which has lots of components…so increased level of technical difficulty,” Toomey said of the course design.
As part of the Edison program, Toomey also attended the Activating your Leadership Journey program “to learn leadership skills and learn from the person’s point of view.”
He says the communication and leadership skills learned there helped set him apart because often times young engineers forget the importance of being able to express ideas concisely. His advice to young engineers is to have a mixture of technical and people skills.
“To do what I do, obviously you need a great engineering background and you have to have the fundamentals right: KVL, KCL, Ohms law, the electrical engineering fundamentals, but you also need good communication and social skills because you’re working on cross-functional teams and you have to sell your idea to others and make sure they are all on your wavelength,” he said.
Other advice Toomey offers for young job seekers looking to get into the electrical engineering filed is to attend job fairs and have your elevator pitch ready, not only work hard in school but socialize and communicate “because success is about communication and hard work.”
Additional skills employers are looking for according to job postings on TelecomCareers.net include:
“BSEE and EIT or PE as well as experienced designing power distribution, lighting, alarm and other systems for a variety of commercial and municipal projects…with strong design software skills including AutoCAD and Revit,” as well as MEP or AE firm experience.
Another posting stresses the need for the communication skills Toomey talks about: “Ability to work with clients, work as member of design team, produce plans, meet deadlines, etc. Need engineer with strong communication skills, both written and verbal.”
The median income for an electrical design engineer is $69,500 per year, according to Payscale.com.