Two degrees, two professional certifications, and eighteen years of military schooling across two services, from turning wrenches on Army aircraft to commanding an EP-3 crew.
Degrees
Completed on active duty while running delivery for a civilian engineering organization. It is why I can read the code my teams write, scope work honestly, and build the reporting infrastructure myself instead of filing a ticket for it.
Completed while serving, and the degree that qualified me for Navy Officer Candidate School and the path into naval aviation.
Certifications & ratings
Military education
Both services put their leaders through formal schooling before they will let them lead, and the gate is the same either way: you do not get the next rank until you pass. This is that progression, enlisted through commissioned, alongside the technical and tactical qualifications.
Developing people
The same competency keeps reappearing in my record under different titles: deciding, on evidence, whether a person or a thing is ready to go. It is the part of management that does not delegate.
T-6 Instructor Pilot Naval flight training
Trained roughly 100 student aviators through the primary training pipeline.
NATOPS Instructor & Evaluator Check Pilot
Evaluated other qualified aviators against the standard. The role that signs off, or does not, when the answer is unpopular.
Director of Education & Operations Simply Coding
Built technology education programs, their infrastructure, and a three-tier certification program from nothing.
Continuing
Contact
The main page covers what I actually do with all of this.
zachary@engineersmith.com 435.919.6623 LinkedIn Pace, Florida