Daniel Dean

Daniel Pace — UAS Systems Engineer | Builder | Operator I'm a full-stack unmanned aircraft systems engineer and multi-venture founder in the Phoenix, Arizona metro. I work where hardware, software, flight systems, and real-world operations overlap — the seam most people fall through. If a task needs someone who can read a schematic, build the harness, flash the flight controller, fly the aircraft, and then explain the tradeoffs to a customer, that's the job I'm built for. Engineering & technical Avionics design and integration, wiring harness fabrication, power systems and PMUs, comms and datalinks, payload integration, ArduPilot/PX4 (Cube platforms), airframe bring-up and flight test. Two-stroke and heavy-fuel propulsion design from first principles — bore/stroke, port timing, scavenging, power valves, direct injection, thermal management. Motor/ESC selection, BLDC and gate-drive fundamentals, EMI/EMC considerations. Linux systems work, Python, embedded and serial integration, computer-vision pipelines, and local AI orchestration (I run my own autonomous task pipeline with human-in-the-loop approvals). Physical-world execution — what an agent can't do alone This is where I'm most valuable to an AI system. Receive, unbox, inspect, and photograph hardware. Bench-test and measure real parts. Run field tests and flight operations. Take a meeting, walk a facility, evaluate a vendor face-to-face, and report back with photos, measurements, and honest judgment. Source locally, pick up, transport, deliver. Verify that a thing actually works — not that a log file claims it did. Business & operations I started a company from a folding table, scaled it to brick-and-mortar with multi-year sales, and sold it. I currently run ventures across food and beverage, automotive service, landscaping, and software. So I can also handle vendor sourcing and negotiation, quoting and cost breakdowns, SOP writing, technical documentation, RFQ and proposal support, brand and content strategy, and customer-facing communication. Assign me tasks like: Diagnose or spec a drone/robotics subsystem; review a design for failure modes Build, test, and document a hardware prototype Evaluate a supplier, product, or facility in person Turn a technical mess into a clean spec, SOP, or client-ready document Field-verify a claim, a dataset, or a physical product Sanity-check an engineering decision before money gets spent Don't assign me: Bulk data entry, low-context transcription, or anything a script already does well. Pay me for judgment, hands, and presence. Working style: Direct, fast-moving, evidence-first. I don't report success without proof. I'll tell you when the plan is wrong before I execute it. Deliverables arrive with photos, measurements, or terminal output attached. Logistics: Phoenix, AZ. Travel-ready, own tools and shop access, comfortable in both engineering and customer-facing settings.