Meeting
Jean-Baptiste Helies
Hardware Developer at Electronics design center

Jean-Baptiste, can you describe your career path to us? 

When I was very young, I was already fascinated by electronics! After completing my baccalaureate in Industrial Science and Technology, I went on to study a degree at the ESEO electronics school (Ecole Supérieure Electronique de l’Ouest) based in Angers. I chose the on-board electronics sector, and took an additional course in connected objects. During my course, I did my first internship and then completed a work-study programme in the LACROIX Electronics design center. It was a very enriching experience. After graduating in 2016, I was then hired on a fixed-term contract and I am now on a permanent contract.

What does your regular day at the design center involve?

As a hardware developer, I carry out design projects for circuit boards for our customers operating in the industrial, automotive, civil and defence avionics, home automation and medical sectors.

My role is to develop electronic assemblies so that the final product complies with both the customer’s specifications and the industrial requirements of LACROIX Electronics, and can therefore be industrialised.

More concretely, I work on hardware features that are built into a product with mechanical, software and qualification interfaces. I am involved in each stage of product design: from creating the initial hardware architecture (choice of electronic components and functions) to  design (development of features), up to product testing and validation.

What do you like most about your job as a hardware developer?

Working as part of a team! In my day-to-day work, I collaborate with both project managers and engineers. For me, it is one of the few technical professions where you are in contact with people from so many different backgrounds.

I also like the variety of projects. In my 4 years here, I have had the opportunity to work on aeronautical products (a remote control on business class seats with a capacitive touch switch), home automation (a professional lamp with smart functions), industrial products (industrial automation for water network telemetry and SCADA) and even automotive products. For each project, the complexity of the product varies, as do customer constraints and functional and aesthetic challenges. The specificities of our production sites and markets also offer a wide range of possibilities for developing different products. I am therefore required to work on very varied technologies and industrial sectors. That’s what makes the job challenging!

In your role, what are the links between the design center and the production sites?

From a developer’s point of view, it is a real added value to work in a company that has both a design center and production sites.

This makes it possible for us to know precisely which technical constraints are present in the factory and to therefore anticipate how to design a product so that it can be industrialised on our production chains. I can easily get in touch with my colleagues at the French, German, Polish and Tunisian sites to obtain information on the operation of the means of production, the industrial processes to be followed or the specificities concerning testing, prototyping and purchasing. I’m always learning something new!

If you had to recommend working at the LACROIX Group to a friend, what would you say to them?

… Join the adventure!

• Varied work thanks to the different markets served and production resources available.
• Many opportunities for development throughout the group: as an engineer, I can choose to focus on more general and managerial tasks and thus become a project manager, or an expert in a specific technical field, for example.
• Close relations between the design center, the production sites and management.