From Software to Hardware: Inside the Mind of a Development Engineer

Sarah Hermann , MAGNOTHERM ’s development engineer, is a key member of the team, but not everybody understands exactly what she does. We sat down with Sarah to get the facts straight. We chatted about her perfect workday, her role in an exciting new project, and how she really feels about safety shoes. “I’m essentially the bridge between hardware and software,” Sarah says. “Everything that’s moving, turning, pumping, switching, it’s all because of the code our team wrote.” The software team enables all the physical technology to run, or as Sarah put it, “We’re the brain of the machine!” Her role reaches into the hardware side with testing prototypes. For every test MAGNOTHERM runs, Sarah oversees the implementation of the test run, collects the data, analyses and presents it.  

When asked what the most important big picture part of her job is, Sarah reflected, “I’m tasked with measuring whole device performance. That includes the Coefficient of Performance (COP), the temperature span, and the power consumption.” This means that whenever MAGNOTHERM sets performance goals, from efficiency to cost reduction goals, Sarah is a key part of making those into reality!  

Let’s dive deeper into cost analysis. Deep tech isn’t just software, it’s first of a kind physical innovation, which tends to make it incredibly expensive. Any emerging deep tech creator strives to bring the costs down to match and compete with existing, mass-produced tech. That is a massive challenge! “If we have new, cheaper components,” Sarah said. “I’ll compare them with what we used before to ensure they achieve the same performance. Otherwise the cost savings aren’t worth it.” 

As you can imagine, our simulations team, who run tests on computers rather than the real world, works hand-in-hand with Sarah. But it isn’t a one-way street. If you have forgotten since our Open House, here’s a reminder: our simulations team runs physics simulations virtually to optimise our tech before we even build it in reality. This process saves us a lot of time by getting us to a massive head start before we spend the money to order and construct something new. If Sarah is going to test a new part, simulations team will simulate, then hand it off to Sarah to test in real life. But once she gains the real data, simulations feed it back into their computer models to optimise and validate the work of simulations team, and move their models even closer to reality for next time. 

Sarah’s been with the team for coming up on three years. First, she was a working student, then an intern, and now a development engineer. Her role here as a working student was similar to what she does now, but it’s certainly grown in scope! For the techies among us who are curious about what languages she uses for work, she mainly works in C++ for coding, and runs analysis in Python.  

When asked what’s most exciting about her job, she thought for a moment. “After testing, it’s very exciting to use the new data and see if the changes we made are working, and if the performance goals we set are being achieved.” For example, with our new double door commercial refrigerator project, Sarah is guiding us forward in some huge leaps. “Everybody wants to move forward quickly, but I need data! The data helps us show progress rather than just experiencing progress without proper benchmarking.” 

Besides pure excitement, what Sarah enjoys most is getting into the hard work of coding for days at a time, and then using it to solve a problem. “Then when the code is applied, I love discovering and seeing the data and then interpreting it. This makes unknown problems become known!” She goes on: “A small project to focus on for a few days is awesome, just me and my computer. When I don’t have these projects, I’m working across ten different projects with just as many people.” 

If she could describe her job more poetically, she said: “I physically and digitally care for all the devices. I make sure everything is running. I can glance at our dashboard and see the start of an issue, then go to the device itself and fix it.” 

On a light note, this author ( Abby Szklarski Kreckel in marketing) and Sarah agree: “Safety shoes for women need some work. They’re supposedly unisex, but the mouth of the shoe is huge. And no, making a man’s shoe in hot pink doesn’t cut it!” If anybody reading admires our startup and has always wanted to build a company of their own, please take this idea and “run” with it!   

Thanks Sarah! Catch you next month, cooling enthusiasts.