Meet the Experts Podcast Ep.2: Andrew Huster, Electrical-Software Engineering Manager

Full Transcript:

Introduction to Acculon and Andrew Huster

Betsy Barry 

Hi! This is Betsy Barry from Acculon Energy, and this is the second installment of our Meet the Expert series, where we shine a spotlight on our talented individuals who are driving innovation and success here at Acculon. And today, we’re going behind the scenes to meet one of our incredible team members, who is going to share his background and areas of expertise with us and talk about his role at Acculon And so I am very excited to introduce to you Andrew Huster, engineer extraordinaire. Andrew, yeah, sorry. Yeah, introduce yourself, Andrew.

Andrew Huster 

Hello.

I’m Andrew.

I’m the TPM of electrical hardware and software at Acculon

Betsy Barry 

And can you tell us a little bit like what your role entails?

Andrew Huster 

Yeah, so electrical hardware and software in our case at Acculon basically means our battery management system. So I coordinate the development of all the electronics that make up our BMS and then all the software that runs on them in conjunction with a handful of engineers and principal engineers and you know, also working with the other teams that we have that are working on, you know, the battery pack mechanical design and all.

Betsy Barry 

Cool. So could you start out by maybe just telling us a little bit about your background? First, maybe your educational background and how you decided that you wanted to be an engineer when you grew up. And then also your professional background, how, you know, what you were doing before you came to Acculon.

Andrew Huster 

Yeah, so I guess I grew up I was, you know, my dad was an electrical engineer, so I couldn’t escape it, I guess, you know, when I was like nine, he was having me solder stuff for his senior design project and whatnot. So I couldn’t get away from it. And then yeah, ended up, I went to OSU for electrical engineering and got my bachelor’s and master’s there.

And while there I was on the EcoCar team, which is an advanced vehicle technology competition. back then it was eco car two and three. I don’t know which one they’re on now, but, yeah, that was a collegiate competition–a bunch of colleges, like 15, universities, all competing to turn cars into hybrid vehicles. So basically we would get a car and tear it apart, put it back together as a hybrid.

And then after I graduated, I went and worked at General Motors up in Michigan for about four years. I worked mainly on autonomous driving and active safety software. So I worked on Super Cruise, their level two self-driving product, specifically in lane localization. So figuring out which lane you’re in on the road, among other things. Then I left GM and went to Disney, actually worked for Disney streaming, on Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Star Plus. They’re streaming apps where I was the release manager for a whole bunch of cable set-top boxes as well as the PlayStation platform. Then after that, I went to a company called Motional that was working on a level four self-driving vehicle that was deployed in Las Vegas. And then after that, I wound up here, sort of back..you know Acculon is right down the street from the lab where I did my graduate research as a grad student so it’s kind of almost like back to home again but working on this time you know electric battery software and things like that

Betsy Barry 

So that’s interesting. You went from automotive to Disney and back to automotive and EV space. Yeah, that’s an interesting trajectory actually. you, I guess in your role at Disney, you did a lot of, I mean, mostly coding, I would imagine. But I know that your day entails a lot of coding no matter where you’re at, no matter what industry you’re working at. So.

Andrew Huster

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

A Day in the Life at Acculon

Betsy Barry (01:20)

Tell me a little bit about what a typical day at Acculon would look like for you.

Andrew Huster 

So I guess for me, because I’m a technical program manager, I feel like I don’t have a typical day per se because they can vary wildly from one day to the next. Some days I can spend the entire day writing code for our battery management system. Other days we’re back in our test lab doing integration and testing work with our batteries and the BMS connected to loads or in thermal chambers or things like that.

And then some other days are just full of meetings with customers, suppliers, our sales folks, on, figuring out, hammering out the details of design or architecture implementation or what we’re going to do next. So it just kind of jumping back and forth between all those things on a daily basis or even more often than that.

Betsy Barry 

Another day in the life of a startup engineer. And is Acculon would you say, this the first startup that you’ve ever worked for?

Andrew Huster 

Haha. No, Motional was a startup, although I would say it was a fairly mature startup and that they had, you know, like 1000 plus employees, but there was still quite a lot of the startup mentality, I would say, I guess, but this is definitely the smallest company that I’ve worked for.

Betsy Barry 

I appreciate the, think that a startup is kind of a vibe almost where you have to wear so many different hats. And so there isn’t really a typical day because you’re just going to have to be kind of all hands on deck depending on what crops up. I actually, oddly coming from a legal background, enjoy that aspect of startup life as it were. All right, well, that’s pretty cool.

Andrew Huster 

Hehehe. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Challenges and Excitement in Engineering

Betsy Barry (06:18)

Let me ask you, what do you find to be kind of the most exciting or interesting aspect of your work here at Acculon?

Andrew Huster 

I think, you know, there’s a lot of different answers for this, it’s, know, like figuring out the the right way to, you know, solve a problem that we’re having or, you know, design a system or, know, whatever. Because there’s, you know, battery management systems are not like a new thing. And there’s a lot of them out there. And, you know, they’re kind of

You know, I guess at the top level, you’re like, the battery management system is kind of interchangeable, you know, but, you know, we’re trying to figure out how do we make ours stand out, from everyone else’s, you know? And so we think about, you know, okay, what’s the safest way, you know, the sort of safest decisions that the BMS can make at any given time, you know, and then we’ve also designed our system, to be very flexible, you know, so that it can work across, you know, any different kinds of chemistries, any number of modules with different cell configurations and so on. And it’s, it’s very easy and doesn’t require a lot of work to, you know, support all those different things. It’s all the same software ultimately underneath, and it’s just some calibrations that you’re changing and designing that and figuring out the way to do that and understanding the trade-offs and like the complications that that entails, but the benefits that you get from it. know, those sorts of big engineering design decisions is what I like the most, I think.

Betsy Barry 

And so in our world, at Acculon, we’re kind of charting a course. You didn’t step into a role here. You created a role, actually. So I think that that’s super interesting.

Andrew Huster 

Yeah. The remit or the job description was kind of like one sentence. It was like, yeah, we need someone to sort of get our BMS stuff going.

Betsy Barry 

And then you show up at Rev1 and it’s drinking through the fire hose. But it sounds like that’s part of the job that you actually like a lot. So let me ask you on the flip side of that, what do you find most interesting, what do you find most challenging about your job?

Andrew Huster 

Challenging, you know, can be things like tight timelines and how we can, you know, still deliver. Also just, you know, anyone who’s done any amount of coding for any time will know that there are those days where you just, your software is broken. There’s a bug somewhere and you just cannot figure it out. And you spend a day, two days a week, even more, just sort of banging your head against the wall until you finally figure it out and those are, you know, those are not fun days when you’re doing that, but, that’s just part of the software development process, I guess.

Betsy Barry 

So on that note, let me ask you about something that I find kind of interesting that I work with engineers and have for a really long time. And something that I always hear is that what they did in the classroom didn’t necessarily prepare them for what it was going to be like in the workforce. I mean, I know that you learn how to code, you do projects, that’s all something that you do inside the classroom.

 

Andrew Huster 

Yeah.

Skills for Aspiring Engineers

Betsy Barry (10:00)

What would you say to somebody who is just starting out in school, they want to get a degree in electrical engineering, what would you say for someone like that? What are the skills that they need to really cultivate, not only inside the classroom but importantly outside the classroom that might actually kind of surprise them? Yeah.

Andrew Huster 

skills. think, you know, one of the things that that, especially in the startup environment that we’re in where we’re fairly small is that, you know, there’s not often someone who knows the answer, and there’s not often a procedure or a process. And so you just have to be willing to chart that course and figure it out. You know, because no one knows, you know, what should that look like? There’s not really

You know, we have principal engineers, but even they can, you know, they don’t know all the answers to everything already. You know, this is in contrast to when I worked at GM, when it was like, there was always, you know, someone who’s been there for 30 years that you could go and track them down and find out what you needed to know. But, you know, here it’s like, sometimes, you know, we’re taking on things that none of us really, you know, have done before. And you just have to be able to dive in and figure it out and sort of.

You know, be comfortable with being uncomfortable, I guess. And, and, you know, knowing that you, you know, are, it’s like, well, I don’t really know what I’m doing here, but I’m going to try and figure it out the best way I can. So, you know, skills that sort of enable that are, you know, investigation, you know, being able to find and read and comprehend documentation and figure out you know okay what are the like best practices and the industry and things like that are all very useful I think.

Betsy Barry 

See, that’s really interesting because I think that’s a big contrast between when you’re a student and there’s a right or wrong answer versus when you’re out there in the world, especially working for a company like ours, where we’re innovative, we’re really trying to push the industry forward, especially like you said with our BMS. So sometimes there’s just no blueprint, there’s no playbook, I mean, per se.

Andrew Huster 

Right, there’s a sort of top-line goal, but how you get there is up to you, you know.

Experiential Learning and Internships

Betsy Barry (12:30)

So what would you tell somebody who’s just starting out in college and who’s really looking at like the first leg of their becoming an electrical engineer is going to be this degree? What would you..what kind of advice would you give them if they wanted to pursue a career trajectory like the one that you have?

Andrew Huster 

Yeah, I would say you know for me, the biggest thing for me was experiential learning and in my case finding a student project team and because that’s honestly I think I learned more from that than I did in the classroom. Because there’s just a lot of things that you can’t teach in a classroom that you find out very quickly when you are trying to, you know, build and install a wire harness in a full, you know, full-scale vehicle kind of thing. those kinds of projects where you are actually hands-on, you know, you’re solving your designing systems and then solving real problems and having to grapple with the trade-offs and implications of your engineering designs and all of that, you know, I think is really valuable. And I think probably not, you know, made clear enough to engineering students that they should get into those science sorts of things. The other thing I would say is, don’t if you, you know, you choose to major in a particular discipline, but it’s useful to take classes in, you know, the other disciplines as well. And, and, you know, have some inkling of what they’re doing. You know, I was mostly electrical engineering, but I took a number of mechanical engineering classes and some, computer science classes as well that help sort of form a more complete picture and understanding, you know, help me talk to our mechanical engineers, you know, about how our systems and packs and modules and all that need to work together.

Betsy Barry 

One final question on that note, because you just made me think of something interesting. I think in really technical fields, sometimes we just assume that students or people young in their career will sort of just by osmosis, I guess, develop more of the soft skills or really how to apply those technical skills in a business context, which might actually create a need for a whole different set of, you know, not skill sets, but also kind of domain expertise. So what about students who are, you know, pursuing a technical degree, you know, preparing for applying that technical degree in a business, in an organization? Do you have any advice like for internships? I know that projects are important, but…

Andrew Huster 

Yeah, I definitely say, you know, seek out internships and co-ops and things like that, you know, as much as you can. cause you will learn, you know, and I would also, you know, encourage, you know, like don’t necessarily do all your internships at like a big company, you know, try and, try and have some diversity of experience there because the, you know, the, the attitudes and the vibes and atmosphere between

Betsy Barry 

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huster 

you know, large and small companies are very, different. And, you know, you’ll just get a better picture of, all the ways in which people interact in a business, good and bad, and you’ll quickly sort of learn, you know, by osmosis, as you said, but you know, you’ll learn the sort of place that you want to work in the sort of people that you work well with, you know, and then the sort of people that you have to put in work to work with kind of thing and that will ultimately lead you to, you know, having a better idea, being more confident about, you know, your decision for your first place that you want to actually work full time. You know, you can be more confident about that.

Betsy Barry 

Mm-hmm. And confident that when a pushy marketing and communication coworker comes to you and asks you to take a break from your busy engineering schedule to talk to her and the good people of social media about your role…

Soft Skills and Communication in Engineering

Andrew Huster (16:53)

Yeah. Well, you know, and, and I think too I used to be pretty terrified of public speaking. You know, I remember even in freshman year of college, you know, we had group projects. We have to get up in front of the class and present, and I just hated it. And it was, mainly through my experience with eco-car where, we had as part of the competition you have at the end of the year–a bunch of technical presentations that are judged by panels of folks from industry. And I had to give those presentations for a number of years. And it was really terrifying and scary the first time, but you’re usually, you know, two, two of you in those presentations. So in my case, you know, I was partnered with one of the team leads who was a lot more experienced. And then I just developed that experience to the point where by the end of my time in EcoCar, my last year of grad school, when I was the team lead, I was fulfilling that function for the younger folks, and folks coming up to me and saying, like, yeah, I’m really nervous about this presentation. I’m like, no, it’s not so bad. And just being able to have those experiences build those skills that ultimately became very important. Especially during my time at GM, because I would be as an integration engineer called in to report on the status of, you know, the feature that I was responsible for in front of, you know, a chief engineer and his team for a vehicle who I’ve never met before, you know, and it was pretty intimidating. But the experience that I gained through EcoCar, you know, had helped me get through those experiences and, pretty confidently.

Betsy Barry 

I like that because I think one thing that I’ve found working with engineers is that engineers are really used to talking to other engineers and communicating technical concepts. You know, a lot of times in a business setting, you’re going to have to do that with stakeholders that aren’t technical. And I think that being able to take really complex technical concepts and explain them in your own ideas…

Andrew Huster 

That is true. Yeah.

Betsy Barry 

..and make a case for them, I think that that’s a hugely important skill set to have that sometimes can only be learned by force.

Andrew Huster

Yeah, and that’s… that’s another thing. You know, I took– we had like a technical writing sort of class in our engineering department that I think they make everyone take. But, you know, a lot of people don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it, I think, because it’s one of those required classes. And it’s like, But, you know, there is actually some good, you know, teaching in there about, you know, yeah, how do you you have to be prepared to explain technical concepts that, you know, varying levels of depth from like incredibly detailed with, you know, someone you’re working alongside to like, you know, what do you tell the executive who just wants to know why things are behind schedule kind of thing. So

Betsy Barry 

Right. I like that. Well, that actually warms my communications heart that you had to take a tech… and my writer’s bent because I think that that is, you know, it’s just something that you don’t want to have to do. But I think communication and being able to communicate your ideas clearly is just hugely important. Of course, I would think that. But well, Andrew, you have taken a lot of time out of your busy day, and helped me work out the kinks of this whole podcast recording situation and I appreciate it. Any parting thoughts as our second expert in our series?

Andrew Huster 

I feel like I’ve said enough already.

Betsy Barry 

Okay, well I appreciate it so much and everybody stay tuned. We’ll have another series or we’ll have another part of this series coming out in the coming weeks and that’s us. We are signing off from team Acculon. Bye!