Hi! I’m Michael Kirkpatrick.
I lead technical teams in the delivery of high-quality hardware and software products.
I bring 13 years of experience across product development, technical project management, strategy, design, and engineering. I’ve worked in software startups, large corporate IT environments, and in aerospace & defense as a systems engineer and product manager.
I’ve been a part of building NASA’s next generation space telescope (The James Webb), managed multimillion-dollar IT budgets, and helped create FabLab, an innovative makerspace for Northrop Grumman employees. I founded Interchange Design, a software startup focused on creating artfully designed digital menus for craft breweries, bars, and restaurants.
I’m a graduate of the University of California, San Diego. Below you’ll find my résumé and links to my side projects and hobbies.
San Diego, California
Senior Product Manager – Cubic
Manage two large product lines: our Personnel Locator System (PLS) and our Multiband Miniature Transceiver (MMT) including its variants and platform products. Developed product pricing strategy and a businesses model to allow the products to be financially self-sustaining. Addressed component obsolescence and defined an integrated product roadmap.
Product Manager – Houzz
Brand Advertising product development including display ads, custom ad products (a color matching tool for Sherwin-Williams), and sponsored products and content. The team delivered $10M of annual ad revenue across web and mobile apps. Led the transition from an in-house ad server to Google Ad Manager while growing revenue through programatic streams.
Product Manager – TrueNorth
Managed and launched 7 major new features over 7 months with a team of 6 engineers. Led the Engineering team through major technology transitions in React and GraphQL. Led the user research, design, and development of the company’s first mobile app. Our software products supported net revenue growth of $4M (2x) during my tenure. I was the first Product team member and led the Engineering and Design teams for my first 8-months. Developed the Product organization and processes.
Software Program Manager – Truvian
Delivered a fully functional R&D tool to our assay science and systems integrations teams on our road to FDA submission. Demonstrated software functionality helped secure our $100M Series C round. Managed a team of four local engineers and partnered with our firmware development team in Australia. Prototyped a mobile app and wrote requirements for our instrument software. Product: Bench-top blood diagnostics tool.
Technical Project Manager – Measurabl
Led Agile Scrum software development teams. Developed standard project management practices and created a Project Management Office (PMO) – a first for the company. Harmonized our project management processes with our Software Development Lifecycle. Regularly partnered with Product Management and Engineering to write user stories and flesh out technical architecture for our web application.
Product Manager – Gigster
Led small teams including graphic designers and software developers to deliver high quality, custom websites and apps to clients. Interfaced with clients, wrote product specifications and user stories, and managed budgets and schedules. Clients included large enterprises (Fidelity) and new startups.
Technical Project Manager – University of California, San Diego
Managed university-wide projects for the Information Technology Services department. Projects included the configuration and roll-out of SAP Activity Hubs for data analysis, upgrading and rearchitecting multi-user IBM software, and rearchitecting and deploying updates to the campus email infrastructure including improved email security and a new SMTP relay service.
Information Technology Program Manager – Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Managed a multimillion-dollar ($12.5M) software staffing, procurement, and maintenance budget. Oversaw and led two internal software upgrades totaling $3.1M. Served as the primary interface and IT strategy lead to a 1,500-person internal engineering organization. Special projects included the IT components of a major staffing and de-staffing effort. Led project teams totaling 26 employees.
At Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
FabLab Space Design Lead
Co-led a 32-person team to design a space that allows engineers to innovate, learn, collaborate and prototype. The space provides an area for collaboration and tools to work with wood, metal, electronics, and additive manufacturing.
You’ll find me in this video for the opening of FabLab and one of the big projects FabLab executed.
Aerospace Systems (AS) Innovation
Served as deputy to the AS Innovation lead. Led the innovation community, and served as a liaison for FabLab.
Integrated Employee Experience
Collected employee feedback on workplace improvements. Developed an internal website to relay the status of workplace improvement projects and to continue to collect employee feedback.
Payload Systems Engineer
Managed, coordinated, and documented the interface and technical requirements for a spacecraft payload.
Sunshield Systems Engineer
Supported the design and development of the Sunshield. Gave a high-level deployment review to our program management, internal review team, and customer counterparts. Led a major trade study on deployment instrumentation over five months to evaluate deployment risk mitigation strategies.
Alignments Engineer
Ensured that the Sunshield met its performance requirements when deployed on-orbit. The analysis took into account manufacturing errors and the space environment. Analyzed the baseline design, interfaced with the design team, and evaluated mechanical shims for adjustability based on manufacturing tolerances and environmental effects.
Lead Mass Properties Engineer
Interfaced with each team on the program to track the mass of their hardware and forecast impacts due to design changes. Maintained a mass properties model and database of the current mass data for the Observatory. Reported the mass status, baseline changes, and margin to requirements on a monthly basis to our program management and customer counterparts. Owned and maintained the Mass Properties Verification Plan and Mass Properties Control Plan.
Catalog.beer – An open-source brewery and beer database with an accessible API. Built from scratch. Available to anyone who wants to contribute, consume, or analyze data about the brewing world.
MEK Studios – My umbrella consulting business that provided web development, graphic design, IT networking, and IT strategy services to local small businesses.
Campus Loop – Co-founded Campus Loop, a startup business targeted at college campuses. The service was a web application for college students that centralized listings of campus events and student organizations and monetized itself through classified postings.
MEK Photography – Photography business I created that provided portrait services and sold prints. The peak of the businesses was a portrait shoot for the cover of Alpha Chi Omega’s national magazine, The Lyre, in 2013.
Convert Unix Time – There used to be a great resource out in the world at www.convert-unix-time.com that I used frequently. It was a wonderful tool. It's since disappeared so I thought I'd recreate the functionality myself.
