DJ Utley

Experience

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  Space Systems Research Lab

  Oct 2014 - Apr 2017

  CubeSat/SmallSat Satellite Embedded Hardware and Software Engineer

  Led development and testing of Command and Data Handling (CDH) software for flight processor for two satellites using Salvo RTOS w/ Embedded C. Developed 3rd satellite while designing 4th satellite using a BeagleBone board for the flight processor which resulted in a savings of 90% for the flight processor alone Spearheaded R&D into COTS hardware & software which cut development times by 50%; this included replacing a mix of SPI & I2C busses which connected the payloads with Ethernet and using readily available libraries Discovered fatal flaws in inherited satellite software and hardware designs which included improper task switching within a called function causing pointer loss, incorrect use of binary semaphores leading to blackholes, and improper wiring of voltage lines for CubeSat radio preventing radio to operate at full TX power Initiated R&D into use of SDRs and GNU Radio to substantially increase data throughput for satellite-to-earth communications resulting in a 3x increase in data throughput while reducing costs by 80% Show less

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  Saint Louis University

  May 2015 - Apr 2017

  Research Assistant - Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

  Conducted penetration testing on approved targets using tools such as Metasploit, dotdotpwn, Hydra, AirSpy, and nmap resulting in a 95% decrease in illicit systems access thanks to discovering and securing over 20 vulnerabilitiesTasked with maintaining and improving Linux servers including users, groups, Samba shares, Apache web server, SSH, automated backups using rsync, package updates, new OS installs, and migration of physical server hardware to virtual machinesTook over special projects to improve classroom/lab learning outcomes by at least 25% involving embedded programming, board designs in Eagle, small robot chasses designed in AutoCAD, and developed programs and scripts in Python to test students’ work Show less

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  Freelance

  Oct 2015 - Dec 2021

  Systems and Network Engineer

  Code custom scripts to automate specialized situations, such as a PowerShell script that asynchronously monitors changes to specific files and copies directories to a remote location on file change.Scrape website containing wind speed data while logging ICMP results to client’s router to correlate wind speed with internet connectivity issues (using Python scripts) as client’s wireless ISP refused to address the connectivity issues w/o data.Create & test custom software scripts & hardware prototypes for IoT devices using COTS Single-board computers, microcontrollers, sensors, C/C++, & Python.Perform site surveys for clients and potential clients and provide estimates, prices, statements of work, and bill of materials for software and hardware solutions.Create and deploy custom hardware and service monitoring solutions using Arduinos with various sensors, Raspberry Pi, C, & Python running Nagios monitoring software.Provide (remote) technical support to sys admins for Linux and Windows servers, networks, site installs, & site migrations/upgrades. Show less

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  Chrislands Inc

  Jun 2020 - Aug 2021

  Web Designer / Site QA

  Update 150+ client sites utilizing Bootstrap 4 with CSS overrides to satisfy designsDesign store sites as sub-domains of main sites with matching styles and functionality, and design sites given only another site as a style referenceTest full-stack of LAMP sites for errors, sanitized inputs, and basic PHP/MySQL security issues using Postman, netcat and Kali toolsets (Burp suite, Metasploit, nmap, etc.)