Interview with Jigish Shukla

Featured Engineer

Jigish Shukla

Jigish Shukla - Electronics Engineer at FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center

How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?

I was interested in electronics since I was very young, my father ran his own business in India where we designed and manufactured control boards for elevator companies like Otis Elevators and Trio Elevators in India. I started out in the industry with my first job as a CO-op at the Federal Aviation Administration’s premier research and test facility the William J. Hughes Technical Center.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

What ever I use to get the job done is my favorite hardware tool. In testing terms I currently use a Tektronix MSO514 Oscope and TLA5202B Logic Analyzer.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I work mainly on FPGA systems so most of my time is spent on Model SIM, Altera Quartus II and Xilinx ISE design suites. Since I have worked with both major FPGA vendors I would say I like both the IDEs.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

The hardest thing I had to figure out so far was a device I helped created that kept crashing. Every so often in a random manner I would leave it up and running collecting data and when I got back to my desk it would crash. Sometimes the issue took hours, sometimes days, and sometimes even minutes later. After going thru a wide range of ideas to debug issue or at least record the state in which the crash occurred I finally concluded that it was how I grounded my power supply on the PCB.

What is on your bookshelf?

Well, I have a lot of books but I refer to two most often. Radar Handbook, by Skolnik; High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic, by Johnson. I am reading Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das, which seems to be a great plug for the EE industry in general because we have products which people can actually hold.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

I can solder SMT components by using a toaster oven. A trick I learned from one of the senior engineers at the FAA. Google it, it worked very well for our project.

What has been your favorite project?

I have had two projects I can say I learned a lot from and are my favorite. The first goes all the way back to college in my senior design class instructed by Professor Michael Bushnell @ Rutgers, where we created a GPS navigation system and I was group leader. Things I learned in that class have put bread on the table for me. The second was an on the job experience at the FAA, on a data recording system called TDAS (Test Data Acquisition System). Creating that system sharpened my skill set to what I can offer today.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

In general working for the FAA has been a great experience. Although I am a test tools hardware developer now and then I also take part in flight testing for various surveillance systems and that’s always a great opportunity to get out of my cube and see something new.

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a beacon signal generator based on the Cyclone 3 FPGA.

Do you still do contract work? What advice would you give to younger engineers seeking contract opportunities?

Yes, I landed my first small term contract writing a C# GUI for an MSP430 project, working on the development board I am holding in the picture. The biggest piece of advice I can give is DON’T GIVE UP! I must have emailed every person imaginable and then some. Although I have only been successful getting software work, I am going all out trying to secure a hardware project after I am finished with everything I am working on now. And lastly to any project mangers looking for an FPGA or an embedded engineer to do some part time contracting on a project, feel free to reach me.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

Since I am an American engineer I can think only in terms of challenges for the American electronics industry. And in the coming future I see two challenges that need to be addressed immediately for the American electronics engineering industry to keep innovating like it has the past century. First I think there is a great number of retiring engineers and not enough young engineers replacing them because those lower tier jobs are being placed overseas. There will be a significant impact on the industry in America within the next decade because of that. The other and probably more profound challenge is getting more young people interested in an EE career. I heard on the Amp Hour pod cast that even at an MIT career fair there where more financial sector companies recruiting than there where electronics hardware companies. That sort of development should raise significantly more eyebrows than it has.