Paul Summers

WORK HISTORY

SKILLS

ABOUT PAUL SUMMERS

I am definitely a hands-on type of person, with a love of problem solving. Product development and design is not just a job for me, it is a vocation (Myers-Briggs MBTI reported type = ISTP).Even from a very early age, technology has fascinated me! My father used to give me odd challenges and I’d spend hours, even days designing a Rube Goldberg-esque device out of Lego to solve the problem… and when I wasn’t building something with blocks, I was in the shop watching/helping my dad or grandfather fabricate something with the metal lathe, mill, saw, or welding up a contraption of some description! Now it’s my turn to act as the mentor as I’m the lead coach for the FIRST Lego League robotics team that my children are on.During high school I took every science, tech, and shop class that I could, as well as worked at a local car dealership as an apprentice on weekends and summer holidays. My apprenticeship was an amazing experience because the Journeyman that I worked under taught me to be a methodical trouble-shooter and to look at the whole vehicle holistically to determine the root cause of a concern.After college I leveraged the theoretical knowledge and practical experience I’d gained to become a formidable diagnostician and fault pattern analyst. I spent several years as a field service technician and fell in love with underground mining equipment due to the fascinating mix of mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical systems. This naturally led to becoming involved with R&D, designing systems and overseeing the technical aspects of projects. My experience working on equipment underground provides a valuable and rare perspective for a developer; I look at every design like I am the person that will be using and maintaining the unit and if it would bother me, I’m sure it would bother the end user.I absolutely LOVE engineering and often find the hardest part is finding a problem worth solving!