Genesis Technology Inc.

Project Manager & Mechanical Engineer
August 2021 to August 2022 | Irwindale, CA
Product Development, Project Delivery & Supplier Coordination

At Genesis Technology Inc., also known as GTI Petro, I led the development, manufacturing, and deployment of cash-payment machines for ARCO gas stations. The machines allowed customers to select a pump and prepay for fuel with cash beside the pumps.

Building on an existing product concept and earlier designs, I took responsibility for physical design, software requirements, supplier selection, assembly supervision, and installation coordination. My role brought together contracted developers, fabricators, company service personnel, and construction and electrical contractors.

Key Responsibilities
  • Managed a $600,000 project budget allocation: $300,000 for software development and $300,000 for other project costs.
  • Coordinated six contracted software contributors: one lead developer in the Los Angeles area and five developers in India.
  • Made physical-design decisions independently and supervised machine assembly by company service personnel.
  • Selected fabricators, negotiated supplier prices, and approved project-related purchases.
  • Defined operating and interface requirements, managed schedules, and coordinated work through field deployment.
Selected Contributions
  • Product development and deployment. I led a program that deployed 28 cash-payment machines across seven ARCO gas-station sites, with four machines at each site.
    • I designed the outer enclosure and internal shelving and mounts for the computer, safe, display, and cash acceptor. The starting point included earlier designs and cash acceptors purchased by the CEO before I joined.I supervised assembly and coordinated the fabrication, construction, and electrical work required for installation. We also used an office test setup with a gas pump operated without gasoline to test machine and software interaction before deployment.The first site became operational approximately six months after I joined, with subsequent installations around the ten-month mark.
See GTI Project Case Study For More Info >
  • Software requirements and delivery coordination. I translated the intended customer experience into requirements for the contracted development team and coordinated those requirements with the physical product.
    • I defined how pump selection, cash acceptance, and the user interface should function. I set development due dates and revised the project schedule when delays or newly identified requirements changed the work.This required tracking dependencies across software, hardware, fabrication, and installation and adjusting priorities as the product developed.
  • Supplier selection and purchasing responsibility. I managed supplier decisions and project purchasing within the program’s $600,000 budget allocation.
    • I researched sheet-metal suppliers, obtained quotes, selected fabricators, and negotiated prices. All project-related purchases required my approval. My purchasing scope covered work carried out during development; the CEO had already acquired the legacy cash acceptors before I joined.
  • Product improvement in response to payment disputes. I worked with developers to add transaction evidence when customers disputed the amount of cash credited by a machine.
    • We added a camera focused on the cash-insertion area, displayed its view on the machine’s screen, and linked locally stored footage to timestamped transactions for retrieval. The camera focused on the cash rather than the customer’s face.To accommodate the change, I modified previously fabricated mounts using my desktop CNC.During approximately two further months of involvement after the change, I do not recall any additional incorrect-credit complaints reaching our team.