Our founders Dan Bodenstein and John English wanted to make engineering design and manufacturing more accessible so that their clients could provide creative solutions for proven market needs. What started as an outsource opportunity quickly grew into what is now Boulder Engineering Studio, a full-scale engineering design and product development firm. We help create and develop products that we believe can change our world.
Boulder Engineering Studio (BES) provides project design and product development for a variety of applications and diverse clientele. From industrial tools to children’s toys, medical devices, and the Internet of Things, we can design and propagate your project from concept to market. Boulder Engineering Studio’s multi-disciplinary team embodies the expertise required to create innovative products to exact customer expectations.
operations
What Dan does for BES
Dan oversees crucial business development operations with BES, including management of cross-discipline development teams, architecture of product specifications, and mechanical design. He also provides business strategy consulting for clients, as well as defines and leads certification and standards testing efforts.
Dan’s successes include multiple concept-to-market successes from programs ranging between $50,000 to over $1M in size. His influence played a significant role in creating bootstrap growth of BES to multi-million revenue in less than five years.
Industry Experience
Before starting BES, Dan served as the director of Product Development and Manufacturing for a small boot-strapped startup called Clear Corporation, Inc. Before that, he was also the sole recipient of the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society US Navy Engineering Internship with Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in college. Dan's strong background in harsh-environment designs and testing is one of the many unique values he contributes to our team.
When Dan isn't at BES
He’s working hard with the tribulations and triumphs of creating a modern, connected home out of a forty-year-old house. He also mentors local startups in the community through the Boomtown accelerator program. In a past life, Dan built and maintained custom classic cars. Some were authentic restorations, such as a ’73 Volvo P1800ES and a ’71 Jaguar V12 XKE. Others were complete modernizations bringing the spirits of classics into the cutting-edge technology of today, such as a ’68 Corvette Stingray and a 70’s Toyota FJ-40. These days, Dan tries (and fails) at avoiding four-wheel vehicles whenever possible. Instead, he opts for riding motorcycles, road biking, and mountain biking. When the roads aren’t hospitable to bikes, Dan’s skiing down the slopes or scuba diving and capturing underwater photos.
electrical
What John Does for BES
On a large scale: growing the business from a two-person startup to a stable, twelve-person company, working with over 100 clients on a range of projects from aircraft navigation to smart pills to art robots. On a day-to-day scale, John designs electronics hardware for many projects, most commonly focusing on PCB layout for embedded systems. This often includes digital logic, analog circuitry, RF communication, power electronics, and design for manufacturing. He also frequently meets with clients to learn about their projects and goals, formulate plans and consulting proposals, and manage projects through their life-cycles.
Industry Experience
John worked for several local technology startup companies prior to co-founding BES. His pre-BES experience included electrical and mechanical development of a machine vision-based sensor for drinking water treatment plants and control and data acquisition systems development for steam microturbines.
When John isn’t at BES
He enjoys designing electronics for personal projects, such as electric bikes, interactive art, and engineering education. He is also a founding member of Solid State Depot, Boulder's first Hackerspace, started in 2010. SSD is a community nonprofit group that maintains a shared workspace and hosts public classes and workshops throughout the year.
mechanical
What Ryan does for BES
Ryan oversees every part of product design from inception to manufacturing, acting at various times as a project manager, design engineer, and occasional technician. His designs with BES clients have been sold in retailers like Costco and McGuckin’s Hardware. Others may be found in cockpits, automobiles, and kitchens across the globe. He specializes in optimizing designs for an intended audience, target production volume, and preferred manufacturing technique. Ryan continues his success forming local and offshore manufacturing supply chains. His efforts include forming important partnerships with manufacturers throughout the world and often involves refining designs for each manufacturer’s unique capabilities or requirements. He enjoys working closely with clients to create initial product sketches with an eye towards industrial design and moving rough concepts into manufacturable masterpieces.
Industry Experience
Before coming to BES, Ryan worked in the assembly and low-volume manufacturer of small electric vehicles. With prior experience as a car mechanic, he has always enjoyed working with his hands and maintains a keen understanding of design for assembly and manufacture. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and biochemistry with a pre-medicine focus and has been certified as an EMT. Ryan studied ACL tissue regrowth throughout his graduate studies and volunteered in novel cancer research.
When Ryan isn’t at BES
Like a lot of Coloradans, Ryan can often be found climbing on a rock wall, hitting the slopes when there’s snow, or commuting by bike. He loves to cook, frequently inventing new recipes, and tries to find time for playing more volleyball and tennis. Ryan recently bought a new pair of inline skates and reminisces about the days when that would have been considered cool.
mechanical
What Kevin does for BES
Kevin is our resident rocket scientist at BES. His main title is Analyst, but he wears many mechanical engineering hats at BES. Kevin’s specialty is simulation and analysis of difficult physics problems, particularly those involving fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and structural dynamics. He’s worked on a variety of projects from simple consumer products to medical devices and high-performance aerospace products. Kevin’s work with simulation and modeling has been crucial for the success of several BES project designs and also in avoiding dead-end or problematic design paths. Kevin is an expert at solving analysis problems including heat transfer and fluids problems, modeling heat exchangers, or cooling systems.
Industry Experience
Kevin primarily focused on rocket propulsion during his undergraduate studies, including the construction of a large hybrid rocket engine. His interests shifted focus towards advanced structural simulation and modeling during his graduate studies. Before joining our BES team, Kevin invested time as an analyst and simulation specialist at GeoMega, an environmental company specializing in groundwater modeling around mining facilities. He also gained experience as a solar design engineer at Cool Energy, Inc., a Boulder-based startup focusing on solar-thermal power systems and Stirling engines. Between his undergraduate and graduate studies, Kevin was an engineer at ATK Thiokol, working on the nozzle hardware for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motors.
When Kevin isn’t at BES
Kevin has a variety of extracurricular activities with his main hobby being skydiving. He is an avid jumper and tries to go as often as work and weather permits! Various other outdoor activities available in Colorado also draws his attention. Kevin tries to go skiing as much as possible during the winter and also enjoys climbing, hiking, and camping. When he’s not playing outdoors, Kevin’s like to create LED art, play video games, and hang out with friends.
mechanical
What Max does for BES
Max’s primary responsibilities include designing and building mechanical interfaces of various products throughout production, including design for testing and manufacturing. His attention focuses on various manufacturing processes, such as machining, molding, and printing depending on project needs.
Industry Experience
Before moving to the United States from his home country of England in 2012, Max participated in projects with Rolls Royce and spent a summer internship with Thales UK working on military defense projects.
When Max isn’t at BES
Outside of BES, Max has a fairly active life. As a child, he grew up in the world of ski racing since his dad is a former competitor. Weekends are spent on the slopes of Winter Park, during the summer as a downhill mountain bike racer and teacher and during the winter as a snowboarder and instructor. When he’s not tearing down mountains, Max channels his British roots and for the Boulder Rugby Team year-round.
mechanical
What Simon does for BES
Simon designs, builds, and tests various consumer-focused products. Involved at all steps of production from conception, design, prototyping, testing, and moving to production.
Industry Experience
Before BES, Simon designed bike racks for Rocky Mounts and worked at an LED company called TerraLux.
When Simon isn't at BES
Simon enjoys mountain biking, climbing, snowboarding, and camping.
mechanical
What Mikaela does for BES
Mikaela designs and builds for the mechanical portions of projects at BES, primarily focusing on the 3D CAD and design aspects as well as the mechanical testing. As the member of the mechanical team with the smallest hand size, she also excels at reaching into small gaps to retrieve items dropped during assembly.
Industry Experience
Before coming to BES, Mikaela worked as a mechanical engineer at a product design firm, designing a wide range of products from makeup applicators to compact washer/dryers. She's also worked as a lab technician at Rice University's makerspace, where she helped design several low-cost alternatives for medical equipment in developing countries. In her undergraduate research, she designed and fabricated robots for wearable mechatronic exoskeletons for post-stroke wrist rehabilitation.
When Mikaela isn’t at BES
As a new face to Colorado, Mikaela has been doing her best to blend in with the locals -- she enjoys biking to work (slowly), rock-climbing (badly), and exploring the mountain scenery (on foot, because she can't ski). She loves working with her hands and, when she can't get enough of it at BES, enjoys making artistic engineering projects on the lasercutter that she runs on an aquarium pump out of her apartment window.
software
What Alexis does for BES
Alexis builds firmware and software for BES. In her capacity as a systems engineer, she advises the systems team on interactions between the worlds of software and electronics hardware and provides hardware design review support.
Industry Experience
Before joining BES, Alexis was a computer engineer in information security, working on low-level hardware security research and hypervisor development. Alexis has designed and built several internal-use products for debugging and data collection from the ground up, including schematic capture, layout, low-volume production, and firmware development. Alexis has contributed to multiple research efforts in the fields of chip-level information security and image processing.
When Alexis isn't at BES
In her free time, Alexis builds digital and analog hardware projects, works on her motorcycle, cooks, and plays with her dog.
software
What Erin does for BES
Erin has strong knowledge of the inner workings of computer architecture spanning all layers from silicon to application to network. She has an appreciation for software architecture that scales without incurring technical debt as projects progress and change. Combining a wide breadth of knowledge and learning ability allows her to jump into virtually any project and enhance it.
Industry Experience
Erin received a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2014. She worked in information security for four years primarily on research-oriented projects. She became an expert in several esoteric facets of computers and gained experience in reverse engineering. She brought her expertise in low-level hardware and security to BES in 2018.
When Erin isn’t at BES
Erin likes to find random reverse engineering projects and exploits in her free time. She also likes video game speed runs and the board game go.
electrical
What Adrienne does for BES
Adrienne supports the electronics design team with new product designs with a focus on design for manufacturability. She works with the design team and suppliers to support prototyping efforts and the transition from low volume to higher volume manufacturing. She's interested in research and developing manufacturing processes that are simple and yield high quality, predictable outcomes.
Industry Experience
Adrienne has been working in Electronics Design in the Boulder area as an Electronics Manufacturing Engineer for the past 10+ years. Her role as part of the Product Development team has been to facilitate high quality, repeatable, and easy to manufacture design from project kickoff until the transfer to high volume production.
When Adrienne isn't at BES
When not at work, Adrienne spends her time with her husband and kids skiing, hiking or exploring new and interesting activities and places in and around Colorado. She also volunteers at her local elementary school as part of the PTO Board and loves to participate in any and all activities that promote science and technology education in our schools. She also spends time caring for her 1 mini-dachshund, 2 kitties and 4-6 fish.
electrical
What Matt does for BES
Matt focuses on embedded work at BES where he is responsible for the design and testing of various electronic projects. His scope of work also includes the design of end-of-line test fixtures to automate project verification.
Industry Experience
B.S. Electrical Engineering- South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Prior to working at BES, Matt spent several years in the aerospace and electronic distribution industries. His work primarily focused on high performance embedded computing and Internet-Of-Things device development.
When Matt isn’t at BES
When not at BES, Matt can be found working on various citizen science and amateur radio projects. When he's not being a nerd, he can be found hiking or checking out the local music scene of whatever place he happens to be in at the time.
technician
What Adam does for BES
Adam helps design and build test fixtures, prototypes, and or machine one-off components and alters products to help make smart decisions in product manufacturability. He also manages inventories of assigned client owned components and maintains the BES workshop.
Industry Experience
Adam is associated with automotive technologies. He primarily worked in the energy sector maintaining electro-mechanical safety systems and equipment. He has worked on and integrated various types of data acquisition, ranging from ecological observatories to heavy machinery in Oil and Gas.
When Adam isn't at BES
When Adam isn't working on updating his home, you can find him enjoying the lakes and rivers of Colorado with a fishing pole. Along with his love of fishing, Adam is passionate about the conservation of our amazing outdoors.
technician
What Emily does for BES
Emily was brought on board to assist with expanding the business into small manufacturing runs to better serve certain client needs. Her other responsibilities include building operations, maintaining and running the machine shop, assisting the mechanical and electrical engineers to build prototypes and perform tests, and whatever else might be needed to help with the general and particular operations of the business. She never quite knows what new and interesting work each day might bring.
Industry Experience
Emily started in the electronics manufacturing industry in 2011 by helping to grow a budding small business. In addition to helping to develop policy and procedure that streamlined the manufacturing process, she found her niche in troubleshooting and repair, eventually moving on to fix arcade and pinball games.
When Emily isn't at BES
It might be easier to list what hobbies and interests Emily doesn't pursue. She spends much of her free time caring for her collection of exotic pets. She is also a lover of nature and science, a fan of micro-cultures and the arts, an avid multi-media gamer, a budding electronic musician, a voracious science fiction aficionado, and the list goes on.
operations
What Danielle does for BES
Danielle maintains the day-to-day operations at BES. She helps ensure the smoothness of onboarding new clients and assists with multiple tasks ranging from financial operations to business development. She is used to wearing multiple hats and enjoys taking on new projects as they come.
Industry Experience
Prior to joining the team at BES, Danielle was working in health and wellness, where she gained leadership and customer service skills. She was exposed to the tech startup industry in Orange County, where she acquired most of her operations and accounting skills. She has helped startups with various tasks ranging from coordinating company events to preparing financial reports.
When Danielle isn't at BES
During her free time, you can find Danielle at the disc golf course, hiking the beautiful Colorado trails, or exploring the Rocky Mountains. She also takes an interest in acrylic painting, spending time with family and friends, and attending concerts.
operations
What Chris does for BES
Chris provides professional oversight for all projects on a systems level. He regularly assesses project risk and applies his vast knowledge of the product development process to the full project life-cycle.
Industry Experience
Before starting BES, Chris served as the VP of Product Development for Lumos Solar. He was integral to the development of a line of cutting-edge solar modules and racking systems that are some of the most robust architectural solar solutions on the market today. His innovations have proven to lead the niche market they developed and are distributed globally today. Today Chris own’s and operates his own solar product development business Solmotiv Design, while also helping BES in a professional advisory role. Chris’ strong background in certification and compliance is one the many unique values he contributes to our team. He is currently a licensed professional engineer in the state of Colorado and Texas.
When Chris isn’t at BES
Chris was drawn to Colorado for the skiing, biking and climbing. When he isn't at BES or involved with one of his own solar projects, Chris can be found scaling a big wall in Yosemite or hitting the slopes with his family. Chris is the proud father of two boys, his future adventure buddies.
operations
What Kimberly does for BES
Kimberly is part of the Operational Team at BES and focuses her time on Business Development and Human Resources. While involved in a variety of positions, Kimberly enjoys networking, community engagement, and focusing on the health and well being of the BES family.
Industry Experience
Before joining BES, Kimberly worked in operations, production design, fundraising, event management, and marketing across a variety of industries including the energy tech sector, music and film industry, sustainable fashion, and a number of large-scale restaurant groups.
When Kimberly isn't at BES
In her spare time, Kimberly is a painter, sculptor, textile artist, and musician. When not working with her hands, you can find her biking, hiking, cooking, and searching for the next perfect spot to throw up a hammock.
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