Pierce Alvir

FICON Firmware Developer @ IBM | MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Binghamton University

West Nyack, New York, United States

About

Experience

  • FICON Firmware Developer at IBM
    Jan 2026 - Present · 7 mos

  • Embedded Software Engineer at Advanced Photonic Sciences
    Jul 2024 - Sep 2025 · 1 yr 3 mos

    ● Assembled an end device that utilizes LoRaWAN to detect parked vehicles and transmit data wirelessly to a gateway ● Designed a PCB over multiple iterations on Altium to reduce sleep current from ~0.1mA to ~0.01mA via hardware testing ● Calculated projected battery life of ~2 years on a 4500 mAh cell based on measured power consumption and duty cycle ● Developed embedded C firmware for the SAMD21 to manage ultrasonic sensing, LoRaWAN transmission, and sleep scheduling ● Utilized ATMEL ICE for flashing and debugging custom boards to validate LoRa transmission and power performance ● Modeled a Python GUI to parse JSON data from The Things Industries MQTT broker and display real-time parking occupancy

  • ECE Department: Senior Design Course at Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University
    Jul 2024 - May 2025 · 11 mos

    ● Advised 35+ interdisciplinary capstone teams (~110 students) on hardware/software design and project architecture ● Organized weekly office hours to instruct teams with PCB design, firmware debugging, sensor interfacing, and systems testing ● Guided teams through Agile methodologies by providing feedback on sprint planning, documentation, and milestone tracking ● Managed inventory and allocated budgets for teams to ensure timely access to components and adherence to project constraints ● Graded all assignments and deliverables to provide detailed feedback throughout the design cycle

  • CS Department: Intro to Computing Course at Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University
    Aug 2023 - May 2024 · 10 mos

    ● Supported 150+ students in a large foundational course covering Python programming and basic HTML ● Scheduled open lab hours twice weekly to instruct students with coding labs, syntax errors, and debugging logic issues ● Graded assignments and labs with written feedback to reinforce core programming concepts and best practices

  • Software Engineer Intern at General Dynamics Electric Boat
    Jun 2023 - Aug 2023 · 3 mos

    ● Researched and gained hands-on experience with cloud-native tools within defense infrastructure constraints ● Installed Kubernetes clusters across virtual machines using Podman containers and YAML files in an air-gapped environment ● Tested containerized services utilizing BASH scripts on Linux to validate inter-container communication and system behavior ● Conducted basic network socket testing to analyze connectivity and service availability across distributed nodes