Tom Buttner

About Tom Buttner

Mixed-signal electronics design, from low power (20 μW, IoT devices living on a single primary cell for a year), to high power (100 kW, empty a 70-lb LiPo stack in 150s), and everything in between. • On-board and inter-board high speed design into the 100s of MHz. I2C, SPI, RS-422 and -485, the usual suspects.• Enough embedded software to be dangerous: STM32CubeMX and mbed primarily, with experience implementing DSP on STM32 under tight CPU time and memory constraints.• DC/DC power supplies, EMI-sensitive design, and Certification Testing.• Highly proficient at SMT assembly, repair, cross-functional bringup and debug, and design for manufacturing.• Architecture, design, and execution of programs in both vertically-integrated environments (aerospace) and in partnership with contract manufacturers and OEMs (consumer electronics).

Experience

1. Principal Electrical Design Engineer

   Square

   May 2021 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

   Lead a team of 10 electrical engineers responsible for the design and integration of products in the Square and Bitkey lines: Reader, Terminal, Stand, Register, Bitkey, and others- Helped direct the EE team, organized design reviews, brought up Altium / Arena release integration- Found scrappy ways to de-risk programs with rapid prototyping as material lead times grew and product timelines shrank: adapters and test coupons, quick-turn dev boards, and rework/reuse of material from other programs- Brought up many high-volume products in Asia- Still focused on hands-on technical work: Altium schematic capture, layout, hand-assembly and rework, validation and failure analysis, plenty of EMC lab time, and even some embedded firmware.

Education

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Electrical Engineering

  2007 — 2011