As a PCB design engineer for Google’s Pixel Hardware group, Matt gets to work on complex designs for one of the biggest names in tech. He's living his dream job. But it's not all work and no play. Matt reserves time for the occasional ping pong game and Google bike ride. Get to know this Penn College grad and learn all about his Google gig.
I am a Staff Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design Engineer for Google's Pixel Hardware group, working out of the Chicago office. I have been a lead designer on one of the phones every year starting with the Pixel 3 XL, all the way to our most recent Pixel 10, as well as supporting many other internal and consumer-facing products. As a PCB designer, I am responsible for bringing electrical schematics to life through the placement layout and routing of both analog and digital circuits for some of the most complex designs in the consumer electronics industry.
I also lead a small automation group focused around creating a suite of tools to offload a bunch of the manual processes us PCB designers do. This allows the team to be more consistent and efficient at the same time. It also allows designers to spend more time doing what we love, which is the actual design work.
A large portion of my day is spent using electronic computer-aided drafting (ECAD) software to work on my designs. These are very complex designs and require a lot of collaboration between me and all the other engineers that make up the different cross-function teams required for developing a phone. In between designs, I develop software and scripts to support our automation efforts. With the latest AI models at my disposal I am now able to iterate on existing tools and test out new ones faster than I ever have before. I am also a certified personal trainer, so there is a good chance you’ll find me using the office gym. There is also the occasional game of ping pong, coffee with a coworker at one of the cafes, or a bike ride on one of the Google bikes.
Every new phone I work on becomes my most rewarding project. Every year this industry is pushing the limits of consumer electronics technology to make phones lighter, have bigger batteries, better cameras, etc. With that, the designs each year become more and more challenging. Throughout my life, I have always been into electronics and consistently find myself on tech websites following the latest product releases and trends in the consumer hardware space. More specifically, I've been interested in smartphones since their introduction in the late 2000s. I would always look at the latest smartphone teardowns online just so I could see the circuit boards in them. I was amazed at how they were able to fit so much processing power and functionality into such a small form factor. Although the Pixel 3XL was the first smartphone I worked on and led the PCB design into mass production, I love seeing my work show up every year on the tech websites I use to idolize.
During my time at Penn College, I believe I thought that the more I knew about the subjects I was studying, the better off I would be when graduating. And, although there is truth to that, I found that during my time in industry, the ability to solve complex problems and collaborate with others with an open mind has been equally important. With that, my advice to the current students would be the following: It's OK if you don't know something. The important thing is the steps you take to figure it out. Start by asking questions. It took me a few years into my education to understand the value in asking questions and to speak up in class.
There are many aspects of my job and I can’t call just one my favorite. To start, I love the designs I get to work on. Each one is a complex puzzle I get to solve. I also really enjoy the people I work with here at Google. They are some of the smartest, nicest, encouraging people I have ever had the privilege to work with. I am also fortunate to work in an environment that fosters learning and the exploration of personal projects. I am constantly coming up with projects, tools and ideas and am given the time to explore them.
Penn College gave me the ability to face and solve complex problems through their hands-on learning and industry-applicable classes. The creation of most consumer electronics stems from a problem, or set of problems, and having the know-how to deal with them has been very rewarding to both me and my career.
"Penn College gave me the ability to face and solve complex problems through their hands-on learning and industry-applicable classes."
Blend theory with hands-on experiences in electronic circuits and devices, robotics and automated systems, vision and motion control, and more.
Unsure which major is right for you? See all academic programs at-a-glance.