Kris Ward

About Kris Ward

Hello! I am Kris Ward.I started my professional life as an aeronautical engineer and continued to grow my breadth into test engineering, systems engineering, team leadership, and team development. My career has been focused on all forms of aviation, including from highly complex rotor-craft (VH-71 Kestrel), fifth generation manned stealth multi-role combat aircraft (F-35), to high altitude, long endurance unmanned air vehicles (RQ-4 Global Hawk), then to man portable small unmanned aerial systems (Nova 2 and iPRD from Shield AI). While aviation has been my career, my passion is always to continue to challenge my personal growth, build and support cross functional teams, develop strategic vision, and ultimately deliver the highest quality product to our customer. I have found success in my career through having a strong customer centric approach. I wanted to be one of the last individuals to verify and validate that we were producing the best product to serve the customer\'s need, and I found motivation when exceeding the customer\'s expectations upon delivery. This led me to flight test engineering for US DoD air vehicles of all sizes, manned, unmanned, and capabilities.In my last position, I was able to found the Systems Engineering, Integration, and Test (SEIT) functional team for Shield AI. This team was able to support the full lifecycle of product development, from design architecture, requirements management, verification, validation, defect management, and delivery of high quality products to the end user. Ultimately, I was responsible for the successful execution and award of roughly $14 MM in revenue award, along with opening product capability to secure roughly $200 MM in future revenue.I am currently developing the Software Integration and Validation team for Zoox. This team\'s charter is to lead the integration, verification, and validation of autonomy, firmware, hardware, and operational elements to ensure our robotaxi meets and exceeds safety and milestone readiness. We are responsible for designing and developing test efforts at the highest level of integration. If you are interested, I am hiring!

Experience

1. Manager, Systems Integration and Validation

   Zoox

   Jul 2023 — Present · San Diego, CA, US

   Lead the Software Integration and Validation team at Zoox. Responsible for leading the integration and validation of autonomy, firmware, hardware, and operational elements to ensure our product meets safety, validation, and milestone readiness.

Education

• Corning Community College

  Associate of Science (A.S.), Engineering

  2003 — 2005

• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering

  2005 — 2008

Skills

• Regression Testing
• Team Leadership
• System Integration Testing
• Performance Metrics
• Quality Assurance
• Earned Value Management
• Event Planning
• Test Process Development
• Test Program Development
• Metrics Reporting
• Process Creation
• Configuration Management
• Systems Engineering
• Agile Project Management
• Testing Process
• Process Improvement
• Aerospace Engineering
• Flight Control Systems
• Issue Management
• Test Cases
• Embedded Systems
• Agile Testing
• Customer Liason
• Issue Resolution
• Test Planning
• Lean Engineering
• Test Procedures
• User Acceptance Testing
• Flight Test Engineering
• System Testing