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Riley Sinek leads test programs for the Aviation Systems and Electronic Test Division’s Sensors Test Branch. He spent his exchange at Invariant Corporation in Huntsville, Ala.
(Photo Credit: Courtesy)
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Two U.S. Army Yuma Test Center employees are participating in the Public Private Talent Exchange. Engineer Leroy Duarte (left) is pictured at MORSE Corp in Cambridge, Mass. where he’s spent working for the last six months.
(Photo Credit: Courtesy)
Imagine being able to swap your place of employment for six months to work at a high-tech corporation, then return to work and implement those novel concepts at your organization.
That is what two Yuma Test Center (YTC) employees are experiencing with the Public Private Talent Exchange.
Patty Conley, Program Analyst for Acquisition Workforce & Developmental Employee Programs explained, “It’s part of a program arranged by the DAU Human Capital Initiatives Office. They work with all our Army acquisition workforce to provide different programs for leadership experiences to help them develop in their roles, especially those that are rising leadership potential.”
Engineers Riley Sinek and Leroy Duarte are both up-and-coming employees with YTC under U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground’s (YPG) extreme weather testing umbrella.
Sinek leads test programs for the Aviation Systems and Electronic Test Division’s Sensors Test Branch. He spent his exchange at Invariant Corporation in Huntsville, Ala., a company he is familiar with.
“I have worked with Invariant Corporation at YPG as a test officer during various counter unmanned aircraft system test events and felt it was a great opportunity to see how they’ve attained their success in developing, improving, maintaining, and sustaining their systems of systems.”
Invariant is known for hardware and sensor development, prototyping, and cutting-edge custom software development.
Duarte, a YTC Employee of the Year, has been at the forefront of YTC’s digital transformation efforts. He spent his exchange with MORSE Corp in Cambridge, Mass. The firm provides customer-focused algorithm and software development services that solve difficult, multi-disciplinary problems faced by the U.S. National Security Ecosystem.
He describes this first day as “a taste of working in big tech” saying it was “a very busy feeling because most employees are all on one floor of one building, not miles apart like we are at YPG.”
Duarte credits the experience for opening the door to software engineering saying, “Breaking out of your current work cycles and patterns gives you space to learn new ones. I’m learning modern approaches to workflows in software engineering, including project planning, not just the technical aspects.”
His supervisor Ashley Thompson, Chief, Data Processing Branch who advocated for him to nab the opportunity which is typically reserved for upper management said, “We need software engineers and data scientists getting that industry experience and bringing it back to our workforce much earlier in their careers.”
Thompson is confident the skills Duarte has learned will help the branch and the organization.
“On our end, it is proving to be extremely fruitful. Leroy is a part of two teams at MORSE working on modern software development and machine learning model training. He’s also getting great exposure into how they manage agile software development projects and can bring all of that back to YPG for us to implement within our own development teams.”
Both Sinek and Duarte return to YTC in late-September and are eager to implement what they learned. Duarte mentioned sharing ideas to, “Re-think how we run meetings and how often we have them, change how we document project progress and decisions.”
Sinek said, “This opportunity has been different from my typical role at YTC, since it has been much more focused on mechanical engineering design. It has given me a better understanding of how and why design choices are made, and the challenges that engineers face when designing and building systems for the Warfighter. I hope to bring that back to YTC by improving communication with engineers and helping to bridge the gap between engineers and testers.”
These types of changes can streamline the workflows at YTC and ultimately get the most accurate data in the hands of those who need it to make critical decisions about test items. This chain reaction is what Conley says the program is all about.
“It allows them to challenge their abilities and help troubleshoot some of the things that are happening here, while also leading the change to what our private industry partners are doing.”