Interview with B-Secur’s Head of Engineering Dave Jardine

Creating and growing a technology business in an increasingly-digital world requires a number of elements to come together to be truly successful. A great idea, a passionate team and robust processes all play their part – not to mention a bit of luck and good timing. But when it comes to developing world-class solutions to work with leading global technology companies, we believe the priority is excellent people with impeccable credentials, a commitment to the company vision and most importantly, a love and enjoyment for what they do that inspires the wider team.

On that note, the next interviewee in our ongoing look at the people behind the B-Secur brand is Head of Engineering, Dave Jardine. Dave has been with us since 2017 and brings a wealth of experience in electronic engineering and design and a passion for technical problem solving. In the first of this two-part interview, Dave shares some insight into his career in electronic engineering, the broad range of work at B-Secur and why no two days are the same.

Tell us a little about yourself, Dave.
Hi! My name is Dave Jardine. I am 48 and from the North Coast of Ireland. I have been married to Irene, my best friend and partner for nearly 27 years now and we have three incredible kids called Jessica, Matthew and Aaron. In my early 20s, I decided to follow a career in electronic engineering as I enjoyed as a child trying to work out how stuff worked in my electronic toys by taking them apart, although I must admit they didn’t always work when I got them back together again!

I started to help a friend fixing TVs and home appliances which I really enjoyed and decided I wanted to get qualified as a repair technician so that I could progress in my hobby. One course led to another until seven years later I graduated with my BEng Hons in Electronic Engineering from the University of Ulster. I started in the engineering industry in 1998 at DuPont on my placement from university. Over the last 20 years I have worked as a hardware design engineer across many industries including textiles, telecoms, automotive and scientific cameras. My passion has always been the technical side of electronic engineering, as I enjoy the challenge of overcoming problems and making stuff work reliably. In engineering, I have come to expect design issues, problems and obstacles during the development of products – that’s what challenges me in my role and keeps things fresh.

In my opinion, this is the true test and success differentiator for companies in today’s engineering industry if they want to excel. There will always be challenges just waiting to be solved in any new technology.

Every day that I come in to work in B-Secur brings a different challenge and the work content is broad and varied. I could be designing analogue circuits one day, researching electrode materials the next, developing digital signal processing techniques the next, building demo systems the next, supporting customers with their technical needs the next, managing the hardware, mechanical and electronic designs, generating technical documentation, researching biomedical affects and influences, developing filter strategies the next, debugging circuits and data both internally and for external customers – and the list goes on!

I also get to have numerous customer engagements on a daily basis, and this has allowed me to work with many great technical people across our customer business areas. It has been a privilege to partner with some of the largest semiconductor companies in the world, ADI, Cypress, Maxim and ST to name but a few. I also get to work with many of the end customers across multiple commercial business models from consumer products to healthcare to automotive. The customer base is wide and diverse due to the widespread interest in biometrics. I can safely say that no two days in B-Secur have shared the same challenges, which really makes my role much more enjoyable than anything I have done previously.

Next Time – Part Two
In part two of our interview, Dave shares more detail into how to get the most from a talented engineering team, some of his proudest moments at B-Secur and the biggest developments he is seeing in digital data analysis – follow us on Twitter to keep up to date.