As my first co-op, Test Evolution will always have a special place in my heart. Like most first-timers the search process was chaotic. It involved a lot of random applying in hopes of hearing back from some company. Looking back, I am so grateful to have gotten my start at Test Evolution. It helped give me a solid understanding of what it means to be an engineer.
For some background, Test Evolution is a small company that develops high performance, low-cost semiconductor boards that are then used as automated test equipment. During my time there, I worked on the Intelligent Instruments. These specific devices focused on the MIPI camera and display interfaces while utilizing both D-PHY and C-PHY low level layers. Ultimately, the Intelligent Instruments were meant to test SoC camera/display modules in the mobile, automotive, and military/aero spaces.
I’m not going to lie; I knew none of the above going in. I had only done preliminary research on Test Evolution before my interview. The very little I did know went over my head. Regardless, in my 6 months there I was able to touch and work on a wide variety of things. I was a part of the "System on a Chip Protocol Development Group" where I was responsible for quality assurance. I measured voltages across boards before assembling them and used oscilloscopes to evaluate signals. In addition, I wrote programs in C# that tested a wide variety of conditions on the boards at different frequencies. The programs I wrote were often run overnight and generated extensive amounts of data that I then had to analyze. All this testing inevitably led to the discovery of bugs. A huge part of my role was to then figure out the source of these bugs. Was a particular issue caused by the board overheating from a high voltage value? Was there something wrong with the specific chip I was testing? Was there an error in the test program I wrote? Or did the board just need to be power cycled? It was a lot of tinkering and thinking on my feet. While some may not have enjoyed being all over the place, I thrived.
Over time I established myself as the go to lab person. At Test Evolution, the hardware and software teams were two separate entities. Although working towards the same end goals, it wasn’t uncommon for a team to be unaware of what others in the company were doing. That is where I stepped in as a bridge between the two. Whenever there was a problem I couldn’t fix, it was up to me to find and connect the right people who could. Furthermore, a pro of being all over the place was that I picked up on an odd assortment of skills beneficial in interlinking both sides. Some crowning moments for me were when I got to show the software guys how to run the GUI or when I helped hardware find the right firmware to upload.
Test Evolution taught me how to successfully integrate into an engineering team. Having the necessary technical skills wasn’t the key. New skills could always be learned on the job. However, being able to communicate and work well with others was crucial. Engineering is a highly collaborative field. It wasn’t until I came to Test Evolution though that I truly understood what that meant. A valuable lesson that the inner child in me also learned was that it was okay to ask for help. This is something that I’ve always struggled with. I would rather suffer in silence then admit that I can’t figure something out. But the environment at Test Evolution was so supportive and encouraging that I never hesitated to ask questions no matter how silly some of them were. In general, Test Evolution felt less like a company and more like a second family. Despite the atrocious commute (driving in Boston changes you for the worse) and literally being the only female in the office, I genuinely enjoyed my time at Test Evolution. Not only did I gain new technical skills, I also got to hear about the lives of my coworkers. Everyone at Test Evolution was so accomplished. Yet all of them had overcome many obstacles and taken different routes to get to where they were. It made me realize that there wasn’t one correct path to becoming an engineer and that it was okay to mess up. I didn’t have much of a say when it came to my first co-op, but even if I did, I would have chosen Test Evolution no questions asked.