Robert D. Schoening

Electrical Engineer (BSEE) experienced in hardware test development operations: production test equipment design; circuit board design (and test); Embedded systems; GPIB (IE-488) instrumentation; test software development; electrical engineering simulation software development; debug and troubleshooting; supervision of test technicians; and test engineering department management. Expertise in both in-house and volume manufacturing test at contract manufacturers (Sanmina, Solectron, Flex, etc).

Product domains:

Hard disk drive testing (IBM)
Printed circuit board (PCB) design and test (raw and populated) (IBM et al.)
Optical transponder and fiber optics testing (Vitesse-OSD, Harmonic)
Embedded systems testing (ICE, PC/104, computer blades, embedded PCs)
Telecommunications and networking hardware testing (Harmonic)
Printer and ICE emulator testing (IBM, Nohau)
Data storage systems testing (deduplication storage, Data Domain)

Engineering tools & systems:

Electronic test instruments (o'scope, spectrum analyzer, meters, TDR, etc)
PXI automated test platform
I2C; IEEE-488, USB, SCPI instruments
LTspice for schematic capture
P-CAD for PCB design
PC-Check, QTPro for diagnostics
Eye-pattern analysis
Hipot testing (and UL certification)
Thermotron Environmental chamber testing (HASS)

Technical writing:

Detailed test instructions for manufacturing technicians
Software requirements specifications (SRS) for 3rd party outsourcing

Programming:

Now programming with Claude Code (e.g. this site).

Python, C, NI LabVIEW, NI TestStand, Assembly, Procomm, HyperACCESS, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, etc. MS Word and Excel. Visual Studio Code (VS Code); Linux, Windows, Mac operating systems. Arduino and Raspberry Pi programming.

Department Management:

Managed a test engineering department of engineers, programmers, and technicians at Ampro Computers.

Worksheets and Walkthroughs was my first website. It was developed in 2012 the way all websites were developed back then -- manually, usng HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and a MySQL database.

Worksheets and Walkthroughs was a website devoted to helping primary school teachers generate math worksheets, and helping primary students understand math concepts via our video walkthroughs. All educational content was provided by professional teachers (family members). The site ran from 2012-2025 and was used by local teachers and others from two dozen countries.

This website (the one you're looking at) was done entirely with Claude Code. Not a single line of code was written by hand! I'm a Claude subscriber, so I was able to use Visual Studio Code with a terminal embedded in it on my Mac. All instructions to Claude were typed via the terminal. Easy peasy. It was much faster than coding everything by hand.

Award: IBM "Outstanding Technical Achievement Award" (OTAA)

A corporate award from IBM for conceiving of and developing a software design tool (TRES, an expert system) that determines the best test plan for unpopulated printed circuit boards (PCBs). TRES (Test/Reliability Expert System) saves 1-2 man years per year and shortened the average test development plan cycle time from 6 weeks to a day. This site had over 5000 employees and its primary business was manufacturing PCBs for a wide variety of IBM products. I conceived of the tool and collaborated with two domain experts in test and reliability (Desai, Hartley) who also shared in award. I led the project and wrote all the software.

Patents: (US 5546321 A, US 5519633 A)

For a second software design tool (MIDAS) that interrelates PCB cross-sectional geometries with electrical performance (via algorithms incorporated from a previously developed electrical analysis tool by Chang, Gernhart, Ho), manufacturability, cost, test (via rules and algorithms incorporated from TRES above), quality (IFR, ELF, SPQL), and second-level packaging. MIDAS (Manufacturability-Influenced Design Analysis System) cut design times (depending on complexity) from days/weeks to hours. I conceived of the tool, obtained management buy-in, assembled and led a team of 10 knowledge domain experts (named in patent), and wrote all the software.

Military Service (Honorable Discharge), 1968-1974
University (B.S. Electrical Engineering), 1975-1980

All professional positions were in hardware test engineering or management:

NEW YORK, VERMONT (1980-1996)

IBM Corporation, Endicott, NY 1980-1993 Computers and circuit boards (PCBs)
IBM -> Loral, Owego, NY 1993-1996 (formerly IBM, now Lockheed) Avionics
IBM Corporation, Burlington, VT, NY 1996-1996 Semiconductors

SILICON VALLEY (1996-2010)

IBM Corporation, San Jose, CA 1996-1999 (site closed) Hard disk drives
Harmonic, Sunnyvale, CA 1999-2000 Video delivery technology
Nohau, Campbell, CA 2000-2001 (out of business) In-Circuit Emulators (ICE)
Vitesse-OSD, San Jose, CA 2002-2003 (acquired) Optical transponders
Force Computers, Fremont, CA 2004-2005 (acquired) Embedded computer blades
Ampro Computers, San Jose, CA 2005-2007 (acquired) Embedded computer boards
Data Domain, Santa Clara, CA 2008-2009 (acquired) Data deduplication equipment

NEW YORK (2010-PRESENT)

BAE Systems, Johnson City, NY, 2010-2011 Defense (Contractor, fly-by-wire system)
Consultant, Endicott, NY, 2011-Present

Please contact me via LinkedIn for a full resume.

Plain Background Slideshow Claude Code for electrical engineering