Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Product Development Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder | Glassboard
Major company achievements: Glassboard uses a computer-aided design tool called Altium for designing and creating printed circuit boards. Drew Westrick played the lead role in designing, deploying and maintaining the company’s extensive library, which contains thousands of parts for numerous clients and projects. This library is integrated with a service called Octopart, an online inventory-tracking system. By linking its parts library to Octopart, Glassboard can provide its clients with real-time data on component availability, lead times and pricing. “This integration has been instrumental in helping clients accurately estimate the cost of their products at various production quantities,” he said. In addition, Glassboard has added 15 engineers across three different technical disciplines over the past three years. “This strategic approach to talent acquisition and development has significantly strengthened our engineering capabilities and contributed to our ongoing success.”
Challenge faced: Ensuring accountability and traceability of code commits—the process of submitting changes made to a code repository. Glassboard’s clients own the work the company produces, and “we need to protect ourselves from potential disputes over errors or omissions in the code,” Westrick said. To address this, Glassboard uses hardware security modules to ensure that each commit can be securely traced back to the individual engineer who made the changes.
First computer: An Apple iBook G4, used to learn web development—specifically, Macromedia Flash MX.
The road: Westrick’s first internship was at a startup called Indy Power Systems working for the CTO, who was responsible for a large portion of the hardware and software engineering as well as the entire IT needs of the company. After two years there, Westrick and his Glassboard co-founder Grant Chapman started their first company together, EVC (Electric Vehicle Club) Racing, which built high-performance electric go-karts. They also both worked for an ebike startup before starting Glassboard.
Go-to website: Hackaday.com, “a great website showcasing cool DIY projects, hardware hacks and clever electronic designs.”
Favorite tech gadgets: Karoo cycling computer, which Glassboard helped develop.•
Check out more Tech Exec of the Year honorees.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.