Day in the life of
Embedded Systems Engineer – Hendry Kaak
I am the lead Embedded Systems Engineer at 3devo and have been working here for over four years.
A typical day for me is within the Research and Development (R & D) department’s development side. I’m primarily responsible for the software that runs on our microcontrollers, and that means that we’ll have meetings about how or what we would like the devices to behave. The meetings are usually at the beginning of the week, leaving the remaining time for software development. To help give structure to the software development, I mostly use software such as Jira or Clickup to write about what features are needed and their priorities. After doing that, I can then go through the to-do list to implement the software and assign tasks to the other developers.
I start my morning by grabbing a cup of tea before sitting down at my desk to check my emails. Once I’ve done that, I’ll go to our project management system to see what tasks are completed and which need working on, then I plan my day accordingly. The mechanical engineers and I have our desks together, which has aided us tremendously in our work together. Currently, we’re working together on an upcoming project, so throughout the day, we’ll have discussions regarding the project timeline and any hiccups we may be experiencing. The day will start with a plan, but this does not mean it will follow through; sometimes, unexpected events can occur, and we’ll have to redirect our time accordingly. Unexpected events could be our CEO, Tim Wesselink, asking to implement certain features. We’ll have to see which of those requested are possible, which are not, and finally, what the ranking of priority will be for the chosen.
As the lead embedded systems, my number one responsibility is to manage our current project. I oversee the allocation of the various tasks to our two other electrical engineers. These tasks can range from PCB or software designs or work within cable management. For me, my job centers around software development and implementation. I’m also the one who relays updates to Tim, letting him know which direction we’ve decided to take. Because we are a start-up, the team I lead consists of only three of us; this is why I value discussions with them on which route we should take. It’s essential to find a middle ground in terms of the solution because you have “many places to roam” (a saying here in the Netherlands). The expression has roots in the fact that there’s no one way to solve an issue; there are many lanes we can take to get there. This is what I love about my job, it’s me solving puzzles all day, and no two days are ever the same. There’s always an element of surprise and excitement when I walk into the office.
Pros
The pros of my job are working on a project as a team and making (sometimes tricky) decisions during the journey to ensure the best possible user experience. Having a team that works towards the same goal helps very much in that sense; that’s why I supervise how well the development progresses for the project’s embedded systems side. As a start-up, we don’t have a large team to work with, but the people we have are dedicated to delivering projects with great success and are open to learning; this helps tackle difficult challenges for current and future projects.
It’s very satisfying to see your software controlling part of the machine with the correct intention. Of course, to minimize software bugs, we have to do code reviews with lots of testing afterward since we cannot identify every problem beforehand. There’s always a chance of having a corner case bug somewhere in the software; luckily, as long as we can handle the bug properly, it won’t cause any lethal hardware damage.
Cons
The con of my job is the amount of time we may invest in the project. I think that counts for every engineer one way or another; it’s the same for me. There’s always something we can make better, and it’s very tricky to keep your hands off of code that could be more optimized or handle a function slightly better. Hardware compatibility is the trickiest one of them all because you can’t change hardware that’s not there yet!
