Franc Gaya
Embedded Systems Product Architect, Home Appliances & Professional Equipment
Barcelona, Spain
I make appliances work from the inside, and I answer for the result: the electronic control, what it has to prove to a certifier, and the conversation with the manufacturer who is going to sell it.
I am a firmware engineer and a system and product architect for appliance electronics. I own the architecture and the requirements of the products I develop, plus the technical governance that comes with them: where the hardware ends and the software begins, what the safety concept has to demonstrate, and what can honestly be promised to a customer.
What I do
Firmware development
From the microcontroller pinout to the user interface, in bare-metal C.
Functional safety and certification
Safety concepts for electronic controls, defended before VDE, UL, and the CB scheme.
Product and system architecture
Architecture, requirements, and the system specification, owned rather than received.
Customer-facing technical authority
Counter-proposals, defense of decisions, and the technical seat in pre-sales.
Requirements engineering and process
Six years as corporate key user of a requirements management platform.
Growing engineers
Pinout definition and thermocouple theory, taught to whoever comes next.
Four ways of working
Every project needs a different shape of engineer, and over the years I have been all four of them:
- Architect , defining a product before there is anything to build.
- Lead developer inside a team, owning the whole while others own parts.
- Sole developer of a complete product, from the two boards up to the user interface.
- The specialist called in for one technology, on a project that belongs to somebody else.
They are all true at once, and none of them stops being true when my project assignment changes.
Career, in three lines
Appliance control electronics since 2012. Application Reference Engineer since 2017, promoted into the role on an oven control platform. Technical counterpart to appliance manufacturers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, on ovens, range cookers, refrigeration, steam generation, dishwashing, laundry, and professional cooking equipment.
Let's talk
If any of this is close to what you are building, I am easy to reach.