Ethan Phillips. Test, integration and software for aerospace.

I'm a computer science student at NDSU, and I write C++ on Linux for the SkyView HDX flight display at Dynon Avionics. I graduate in December 2026 and I'm looking for full-time work in test, integration or software engineering, ideally in aerospace and aviation. I'm happy to relocate.

Fargo, ND Open to relocating GPA 3.95

Experience

  1. Software Engineer Intern, Dynon Avionics

    Mar 2025 – present

    Dynon builds avionics for experimental and certified light aircraft. I work on features for the SkyView HDX flight display, writing C++ that runs on Linux.

    • Developed IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) features for the SkyView HDX flight display in C++ on Linux.
    • Helped build and debug a parser for an SBAS receiver, including checksum computation and DLE-escape logic.
    • Built a Qt-based SBAS GPS simulator for repeatable testing of specific flight scenarios, covering ~50% of the IFR system verification plan.
    • Created internal engineering tools, including a navigation database mining tool and a display latency measurement tool used to verify system requirements.
    • Tasked with giving customers access to the Linux-based SkyView app, designed and prototyped two approaches: a custom WSL distribution that runs the app natively on Windows, and a web application that provisions on-demand Docker instances and streams them via noVNC.
    • Executed ~33% of the IFR system verification plan as part of a three-person team led by the Test Engineer.
    • C++
    • Linux
    • Qt
    • Docker
    • GDB
    • Jira
  2. B.S. Computer Science, North Dakota State University

    Expected Dec 2026

    GPA 3.95. Dean's List every semester. Treasurer of the Travel and Adventure Club, and in the NDSU Climbing Club.

Projects

AI Substation Design System

NDSU capstone · team of 4 · 2026

An AI-powered tool for electrical substation single-line diagrams, designed to help electrical engineers in the early design phase. Built with the Ulteig software engineering team as a full-stack web application that can be deployed to their employees.

I developed the RAG architecture, the database architecture and the frontend design. We ran Scrum the whole way through, with three other group members.

  • LLMs
  • RAG
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • pgvector
  • LangGraph
  • Claude API
  • FastAPI
  • React

Whiteboard

web · 2026

A read-only front end for Blackboard Learn. Due dates, grades, announcements and assignment sheets each live on a different page for every course, so Whiteboard puts them on one screen: every deadline across every course, a calendar, grades that account for category weights, and a search box that covers assignments, announcements and the text inside handouts.

It runs entirely in the browser. A small Manifest V3 extension is the only part that ever touches Blackboard, and it only sends GET requests to the one server you connect. There's also a Claude tab that uses the Claude Code already on your computer.

Unofficial, and not affiliated with Anthology.

  • React
  • IndexedDB
  • Manifest V3
  • Vite
  • GitHub Actions

DMR Hearings

search · 2026

Search across five years of North Dakota oil and gas hearings, where every result links to the exact second in the recording. The Industrial Commission streams every hearing to YouTube, which adds up to hundreds of hours of testimony, and the only way to find anything in it was to scrub through the videos.

I pull the auto-captions for every hearing since December 2021 (156 so far), split them into cases, and use the official dockets to fix the names the captions get wrong. Search runs keyword and embedding queries over overlapping 75-second chunks and merges them with reciprocal rank fusion, all in one SQLite file.

I use it through an MCP server with five tools, so Claude can search, read around the best hits and cite the case number, date and timestamp.

  • Python
  • SQLite
  • FTS5
  • sqlite-vec
  • fastembed
  • yt-dlp
  • pypdf
  • MCP

InkSlate

Hardware · in progress

A low-power e-ink notification display I'm designing from the board up. Custom PCB in KiCad, firmware in C on an ESP32-S3, and notifications that reach it over Bluetooth through Apple's ANCS.

  • C
  • ESP32-S3
  • ESP-IDF
  • KiCad
  • BLE

StudyBuddies

CSCI 313 · team · 2025

A full-stack web app that matches students as study partners based on similar academic needs. I led development.

A matching algorithm pairs students by course schedule and study habits. RESTful Django services handle matching and study group creation, and Firebase handles authentication, student verification and data synchronization.

  • Angular
  • TypeScript
  • Django
  • Firebase

Toolbox

Languages

  • C++
  • C
  • Java
  • Python
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • SQL

Technologies

  • Angular
  • React
  • Postgres
  • .NET
  • Qt
  • Git
  • Linux
  • Docker
  • Jira
  • Azure DevOps

Off the clock

Outside of work I climb, run, longboard and play guitar. At NDSU I'm in the Climbing Club and I'm the treasurer of the Travel and Adventure Club.

Let's talk.

I graduate in December 2026 and I'm looking for full-time work in test, integration or software engineering, ideally in aerospace and aviation. I'm happy to relocate. Email is the best way to reach me.