Bjorn Warloe
Software Engineer
I have been working as an engineer for Sigma Design since 2011. The past few years I have had the pleasure to be placed on-site with one of our clients building a software product that has enhanced their ability to do prototyping and low volume manufacturing here in the Pacific Northwest. I enjoy being a part of a manufacturing team and it has been very rewarding to help enable onshoring of that work while also building a great relationship with the client.
My educational background is in Chemical Engineering, graduating from Oregon State University in 2001. I worked for 5 years as a Product Engineer for Hewlett Packard in their Silicon Fabs in Corvallis and Singapore. After that I transferred to HP's Vancouver site and began a role as a Mechanical/Firmware Engineer focused on printhead health. I like to describe what I did as being in charge of the car wash inside the printer working both on the mechanical design of the service station as well as the algorithms controlling servicing.
After my time at HP ended Sigma gave me the chance to continue to build on the programming skills I had developed while working at HP. My favorite thing about working for Sigma is that there is both the opportunity and the expectation that we will grow our skills to meet the needs of our customers.
My educational background is in Chemical Engineering, graduating from Oregon State University in 2001. I worked for 5 years as a Product Engineer for Hewlett Packard in their Silicon Fabs in Corvallis and Singapore. After that I transferred to HP's Vancouver site and began a role as a Mechanical/Firmware Engineer focused on printhead health. I like to describe what I did as being in charge of the car wash inside the printer working both on the mechanical design of the service station as well as the algorithms controlling servicing.
After my time at HP ended Sigma gave me the chance to continue to build on the programming skills I had developed while working at HP. My favorite thing about working for Sigma is that there is both the opportunity and the expectation that we will grow our skills to meet the needs of our customers.
Questions & Answers
How do you make people laugh?
I enjoy a good meme, being able to laugh at adversity makes everything seem a bit easier.
If you were a tool or piece of equipment, what would you be and why?
I think the tool that best describes me is a swiss army knife. I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of having such a variety of types of engineering jobs over my career. For a while I was the only Chemical Engineer working for Sigma and so occasionally I would get pulled into a project to help. My favorite one of those projects was working to create a better formula for a lens cleaning product. The formula they were using was causing discoloration of white plastic parts and I was able to research and suggest an alternative chemical and designed testing to show that was just as effective at cleaning but solved the staining issue. It was really rewarding to see it on the shelf for sale.
What's your favorite productivity hack or time-saving trick?
I like to document processes, it seems like the opposite of a time-saving trick sometimes but when you need to come back and do something that you haven't done in a few months having written down precise instructions is such a time saver. It also makes it so much easier if you need to hand something off to another person.