My wife asks me this question, quite seriously, at least once every other week. I know that she finds my attempts at explanation less than satisfactory when I allow the engineer in me to keep the explanation technically accurate.
For her benefit – and perhaps more so for mine: I build and configure systems – principally computer software systems – to better manage Product Development.
The particular nature of this activity has varied over the course of my career. I have leveraged internal, proprietary software to model acoustic behavior of materials in an effort to speed development activities. Given my fundamental dislike for mindless repetition, I have often written software to reliably, quickly perform repetitious activity – such as data analysis. At the present time, I configure Oracle Agile PLM, perform routine system and business process support, and write automation (Process eXtensions) to assure that things move swiftly and to gather necessary data for team members to perform their jobs with the least amount of digging.
As I extend my reach with my Masters of Science in Engineering with a Concentration in Computational Engineering, I see myself fundamentally extending the same aim in a more technical manner. I have written (simple) Finite Element Analysis code, and I have leveraged commercial Finite Element Analysis software (Abaqus). I have leveraged commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics software (Ansys) for the sake of generating an unstructured mesh which I then solved with a Navier-Stokes solver that I had written in Python. In this closing semester at Purdue, I will write a Ffowcs-Williams & Hawkings (FWH) solver for Computational Acoustics. The complexity is different, but the aim is the same: better enable the Product Development process.
I build and configure computer software systems to better manage Product Development. The particular nature may change with time / position, but it will continue to be the activity at the center of my career.
– Derek