Our Spotlight on Super series highlights the SRC team members who help keep the company a great place to work and grow. For this installment, we sat down with Eli Vasquez, who was hired in 2022 and works on the manufacturing engineering team at our Arizona Division.
Q: First off, where are you from? Where’s home?
Q: What’s involved in your role? What’s a ‘typical’ day at work like for you?
EV: As a technician, I get to work with every department. The main goal is to facilitate their jobs so they can make quality products. Alongside our maintenance department, we make sure equipment is operating and being used properly. There’s some overlap with my work and that of our maintenance team, but my side of things will typically involve more CAD and manufacturing. This can be from a fixture for assembly to a bespoke system. There are also things like supporting the team when we’re developing a new product line. Not the design of the product, though. That’s the sales engineering and drafting team.
But our job is to work on the processes of manufacturing our products. On any project, there is a learning stage for our operators to be comfortable using the new tool or executing new steps. It's difficult to make a tool that works perfectly without any adjustments on the first try. The team will go through iterations by prototyping and trial and error methods before fully incorporating any tool or equipment into the shop. All of this work is shared with the manufacturing engineers here in Arizona. Their roles have more technical aspects. A lot of what we do is work to onboard and commission new large pieces of equipment and "big picture" items on the scaling of the company as we continue to expand here in Arizona.
Q: How did you come to work for SRC? What’s the story there?
EV: Well, I started as a summer intern. I met Tyler Sleeman (Director of Manufacturing) at ASU while doing my B.S.E. We got to talk about work, and he shared what he got to do at SRC. He talked highly about the company and the projects he showed me interested me. I asked him for an opportunity to intern at SRC. I did that through the summer and when summer ended, I asked if I could continue to work while I finished my engineering school. They are very accommodating and offered me to stay on as a technician to assist the newly developed manufacturing engineering team in Arizona. The plan is once I graduate in May 2025 I will transition to a manufacturing engineer role.
Q: Have you always enjoyed working with your hands?
EV: For sure. Growing up, my dad was a mechanic and electrician, so I grew up around him doing work on cars, that sort of thing. I remember – even when I was a little kid – wanting to grow up and become an automotive engineer or something along those lines, but I wanted to be more on the exterior design and aerodynamics.
But the more I’ve learned about that side of things, I don’t think the automotive engineering path is for me. I like the actual building of the cars, and being in school, I’ve gotten to learn more about that world, and it is not what I imagined it to be. I like this world better.
Q: If you were talking to someone who was considering working at SRC, what would you want them to know about working here? What about this place makes it a good place to work?
EV: I would say it’s the people. Even as we’ve grown a ton lately, the culture has stayed good, and that’s because of the people, I think. SRC is the place to come if you want to work with people who are passionate about what they do and proud of their work.
Q: What about when you’re not at work? How do you like to spend your time?
EV: Right now, school takes up most of my time. But I do still like to tinker on cars – I don’t really have any projects like that going on right now, just mostly trying to stay busy with work and school, but when I do have the time, that’s something I enjoy doing, especially Japanese cars – Nissan, Infiniti, Toyotas mostly. And I’m married now, so I do a lot of taking care of the house and making sure everyone’s happy. I do make sure to always find time to serve at my church every Sunday.
If you’d like to know more about working at SRC, be sure to stop by our Careers Homepage to learn more about who we are, what we make, and where we work. And stop by our job listings page to see our open positions. Manufacturing experience is preferred, but not required. If you’ve got a positive attitude and a good work ethic, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading.