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VoltSafe Blog Team – January 5, 2024
Jonathon was looking to move on from his role as a kayak guide. He experienced a lot of wild and cool adventures from discovering and exploring remote islands of the coast to BC, to pushing his kayak through mudflats during a guided trip. He decided to take a look at a job back on land and came upon an intriguing opportunity at VoltSafe. The company was seeking a mechanical engineer to work with the existing team, and assist with building the hardware side of VoltSafe’s award winning technology.
Jonathon had always been mechanically inclined from a young age, very interested in putting things together and building things. In high school, he started a robotics team that was working on a snow shoveling robot (which eventually turned into a snow shoveling robot with a flamethrower built into it). He cites that it was the scariest and most dangerous thing he has ever worked on. He thought about pursuing a career in carpentry and while his parents supported his interests, they also wanted him to get a post secondary degree.
Early on, he worked for a couple of companies on hardware but decided to explore a completely different path and obtained his certification in kayaking. Jonathon loves going out to Quadra island where the water is calmer – he could watch humpback whales while exploring some of the smaller islands in the region.
“Portraying the role of ‘the middleman’ comes naturally to me”, he says, “working to manage expectations of industrial design and power engineering to bring hardware to life.” He also knows that working in a dog friendly environment means that he has to manage the expectations of ‘Pawer Engineer, Toby’ and ‘Mobile Developaw, Ola’. Both pups expect lots of pets between naps.
Another perk of being at VoltSafe, Jonathon remarked, is that the office is located in an accessible area of Metro Vancouver. He also liked the idea that he would be working on products that are solving a real-world problem, rather than working on a product that would be considered “cool to have, but not necessary”.
Admittedly, he’s relieved that all he has to do is bring his mechanical skills to VoltSafe’s hardware and let James handle the dynamic aesthetics of the product. Jonathon works a lot with the company’s 3D printing machine and enjoys it so much that he now has one at home. While he has made some things for his personal use at home, what he is really proud of is the camera he built for VoltSafe Marine which ended up making its way onto the trade show floor at METSTRADE in Amsterdam, the largest marine industry trade show in the world.
Jonathon is enjoying his role at VoltSafe. He spends his days pairing the (Red Dot Award-winning) vision of Industrial Designer, James Hathway, with the work required from the power engineering team. Jonathon worked with James in a previous role and company, but it was indirectly and under the supervision of another person. At VoltSafe, Jonathon works directly with James, collaborating to help bring new VoltSafe products to life.
An interest in cameras also comes naturally to Jonathon. When not working, he enjoys wandering the city of Vancouver and photographing abandoned places. Whether its buildings or plots of land, graffiti covered walls, or even alleys after dark, Jonathon has an eye for interesting imagery. “There are interesting stories to tell through a camera lens”, he notes, “I find these types of areas in abundance in this city compared to my hometown of Calgary, and I think it’s part of what makes this city so interesting.”
If you would like to join Jonathon in the VoltSafe Lab and contribute to building products that will change the way we connect to electricity, keep an eye open for new opportunities on our Job postings page on LinkedIn, or check out our careers page.
About VoltSafe Inc.
VoltSafe Inc. is changing the way people connect to power. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, the Canadian tech startup has reinvented the electrical plug by eliminating prongs, adding magnets and an “electrical fingerprint”. Using patented technology, VoltSafe has created the world’s safest, simplest, and smartest plug design since electricity came into homes more than 140 years ago. The company’s product pipeline includes magnetic plug replacement solutions for household, commercial, industrial, marine, electric and autonomous vehicles, emergency services, data centres and more.