Alumna enjoys creative challenges found in hardware engineering, product design

6/3/2020 Amanda Maher

Written by Amanda Maher

MechSE alumna Jennifer Lin
MechSE alumna Jennifer Lin
Art and the desire to create have driven alumna Jennifer Lin (BSME ’15) to dream big and pursue work that allows her to utilize all of her creative and technical skills. She said she is motivated to work on projects where she can tangibly see the effects of the product. Since graduating, she has pursued opportunities in San Francisco, contributing to several startups.

During the winter break of her senior year in MechSE, Lin participated in the Design 4 Autodesk challenge for which she wanted to model something related to food. That Christmas, Autodesk sent her a blender, and Lin spent 50 hours modeling it with their software, Fusion 360, which was still new at the time. The experience earned her a remote internship with Autodesk, serving as a Fusion 360 Advocate intern and creating 3D models to showcase the capabilities of the software.

After graduation, Lin moved to the San Francisco office of Autodesk to continue her internship, where she was able to network and meet a member of the Alpine Labs team. One of their startup incubators was developing a camera drone that needed an aesthetic enclosure model. Lin performed design of experiment studies, uniform light distribution and brightness studies, and geometry studies of the “looks like” prototype that she created using existing CAD models. She worked on that project for about a month before she found her next adventure.

Lin enjoys taking photos on her phone, so when she found the Prynt team, she said she knew she wanted to be part of their effort. The Prynt Case is a handheld device that allows users to connect to their phone and instantly print stickers of their photos. For their first project, she worked on the cost optimization, eventually helping to develop the next-generation product, the Prynt Pocket, from conception through mass production. She was given the opportunity to visit the manufacturing space in China as well as work with operators to learn how products were assembled, bringing further insight into the topics she learned in ME 350, (now ME 270).

Lin enjoys the creative challenge of design for manufacturing, considering factors that she learned from the Design for Manufacturing class in her undergraduate time.

“I remember really enjoying the DFA assignments where we summed up the total assembly time based on all the steps needed to put components together. I used the same document we got in class to try to cost down the first Prynt case. The product had almost 30 screws and I thought to myself that if we could reduce it even by half, we could save almost an entire minute of the assembly time! I brought it up to our contract manufacturer and they didn’t really respond or seem that impressed with my solution. When I went on the assembly line I was shocked to see that there were automated screw feeders as well as magnetic torque controlled screwdrivers; the operators took less than a second to pick up and screw in. I had no idea machines like this existed and it really opened my eyes to how automated the assembly processes could be. Ultimately, we did reduce the number of screws on the product and even now at Samsara I still think about all the design considerations from ME350, including making it easier for line operators to put together the products I help create.”

After nearly two years with Prynt, Lin was approached by a recruiter for another startup, Samsara, which would prove to be the beginning of her next professional step.

Samsara combines hardware, software, and cloud to bring analytics, visibility, and AI to operations. Their work touches many areas of operation including transportation, food production, energy, construction, local governments, and manufacturing.

When Lin started working with Samsara, their team was composed of just under 200 people. “During my internship I was working remotely with no face-to-face interaction, and when I was in San Francisco I was trying to hop around and learn from teams that had only about five people. Going to a company of 200 people with 15 hardware team members and two mechanical engineers that I could learn from was a dream!” she said. (Since then, Samsara has experienced hyper growth, and now employs 1,700 people.)

As a Hardware Engineer and Product Designer, Lin is part of an eight-person product design team that works with the electrical and new product introduction engineers to design enclosures for gateways and sensors. “I also get to work on packaging, cables, install guides and labels, and direct communication and some negotiation with our overseas and local vendors,” said Lin.

She said she feels grateful to have had time to search for a job she was really interested in. “I also had lots of interviews where I was told I wasn’t technical enough to be a mechanical engineer, or that I didn’t have enough design background to go into design. Neither of these critiques were constructive and I’m really glad I didn’t listen to any of them. All it takes is one person or one company to believe in your potential and if you’re lucky enough to have people championing for your success, you can get where you want to be.”


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This story was published June 3, 2020.