Motorola Solutions

I believe that there's more than one way to be successful. My definition of success might be different than yours, but only you can define success for yourself. Once you identify the path to your goal, you need to have the right resources and support in place to reach it.

At Motorola Solutions, we encourage our employees to pursue their passions and potential. Members of my team have been interested in exploring new areas, and with new projects always happening across the company, it has been easy for me to find the right opportunity for them.

We also have formal rotation and mentorship programs that employees can participate in to further maximize their impact, as well as opportunities for employees to work on a task of their choosing outside their normal responsibilities. In addition, we have eight business councils, which are voluntary groups that allow employees to help shape our culture and drive business results.

The councils provide opportunities for networking across functions, personal and professional development, volunteerism and more. For employees who aren't ready to fully switch to a new project, these programs allow them to explore alternate paths for success.

Our company's purpose is to help people be their best in the moments that matter. And we know that it's only when we're at our best that we can help our customers and communities be their best. In that spirit, we provide a variety of learning and development opportunities specifically focused on well-being throughout the year.

We also offer initiatives like Global Months of Service, our annual two-month "volunteer-a-thon" and, just this year, we introduced "Global 5K and Take the Day," encouraging Motorolans to invest in their physical and mental well-being by participating in a 5K and taking a paid mental health day. Additionally, we offer competitive benefits, global wellness and assistance programs and bonus and stock plans.

But one of the things our employees love most is our flexible work environment as well as our flexible time off policy, recognizing the importance of taking time away from work when you need it, whether that's for for sick days, vacation or simply to recharge.

You need to live the life that you want to live, and not try to cover anything up.

It's important to experience diversity for a better understanding of others and to have the curiosity to want to know more about others.

I was incredibly excited to join Motorola Solutions in October 2023 as a sales engineer. In this role, I have the opportunity to work with customers on the front lines to help solve complex technology challenges in real time and contribute to creating a safer world, something I am passionate about every day.

Reflecting on my time as a new employee, it was important to me to become an expert in our safety and security ecosystem of technologies as quickly as possible, positioning myself as a key technical resource for my team and the customers I support. Additionally, I've always had a desire to take on more leadership in my career, so finding ways to contribute to organizational success was also important to me.

In my first week, I hit the ground running with new hire training, learning about the real-world applications of our technologies. I was also provided specialized training in the core areas I supported, like our license plate recognition solutions. We had dedicated work hours to experiment in a sandbox environment, allowing me to practically apply my knowledge and skills with the technology.

For example, I was able to personally test our innovative LPR technology to open a gate when a known vehicle entered my driveway. Upon completing onboarding, we demonstrated a specific product to our peers, fostering constructive feedback while helping solidify everything we learned.

This experience positioned me very well to subsequently present to our customers. Inspired by the support I received during this process, I wanted to train other new hires in sales engineering, taking on a leadership role among my peers. My team provided resources to create a new, dedicated sales engineering mentorship program, where I piloted various training sessions and collaborated with management and team leads who provided me feedback on how to refine this initiative through performance reviews.

These experiences have significantly impacted my future growth, establishing me as both a technical and leadership resource within the organization. I've had the opportunity for higher-level roles and to expand my experience as a mentor. For my team, I'm a subject matter expert in LPR technology and the Motorola Solutions ecosystem, enabling me to lead projects, troubleshoot complex problems and train my colleagues.

Within the first six months, I had already interacted with many customers (too many to count!), finding it incredibly fulfilling to help solve their challenges. Upon introducing the dedicated sales engineering mentorship program, we further reduced ramp-up time and improved retention by supporting engineers after the onboarding program through a peer-based support system, serving as an ongoing, structured and supportive learning environment.

Personally, I feel more confident in my skills, driving innovation and team development, helping shape my career path in leading new and bigger technology initiatives throughout the business.

Our software team builds technologies that help keep people safe and secure everywhere, and with this imperative, availability and reliability are critical. There was a time when we found ourselves facing a significant data load increase that was not forecasted.

The new volume of data could create workflow challenges during peak times and maintenance routines or max out storage. Multiple engineering teams collaborated to isolate the bottlenecks and enable scale, all while making minimal changes to our core code.

We were able to remove all bottlenecks and implement a plan that safely and securely kept data flowing and accessible with minimal downtime to the end user. This experience highlights how critically important it is to have a scalability plan in place while taking the time to allocate development resources for a large migration project.

We also learned that rapid innovation is best when it comes from all team members bringing ideas to the table, openly collaborating and ideating — all backed by our decades of experience working with our customers to support confident operational performance.

To reduce risk and ensure reliability, we're always looking for opportunities to simplify and limit code changes. We know that the more complex a solution is, the more it can be prone to bugs and defects. We also understand the importance of the validation of code in development environments while having multiple engineers review changes.

This means scanning code before each deployment and having other teams assess the solution. By doing this, we help ensure the software is safe and reliable. Additionally, we conduct extensive field tests following significant software changes or enhancements.

For example, we recently introduced a new performance mode on one of our cameras which was a significant change, touching multiple aspects of our firmware. This led to field tests for multiple cameras running live traffic for several weeks to verify that the feature met our standards.

This practice enables us to iterate and release quickly, with the safeguards in place to continuously enable our customers with technology advancements.

Our engineers are steadfast in our never-ending pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. And given the growing complexity of threats and challenges, it's vital that we are constantly evolving and learning together. As a team, we've adopted best practices of code review and quality control methodology.

This means we ensure multiple developers review code changes, and we expand this protocol to introduce additional review cycles commensurate with the criticality or risk profile of the update. Our leadership team also highlights when risk warrants assessment, which is key in steering a release or change.

I'm incredibly proud of our impressive engineering team, building software to help to protect people, property and places so everyone everywhere can thrive.

My blog would be titled, "Meeting You Where You Are." At Motorola Solutions, we understand AI isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Each unique role has a distinct way of processing information and understanding this allows us to shape our solutions to address our customers' unique needs.

Given the critical nature of public safety, our AI is thoughtfully designed to assist and inform rather than distract. For example, 911 call takers' priority is to gather essential information quickly and accurately to dispatch the appropriate help. We design AI to help collect this in a simple "who, what, where, when, why and how?

" format. On the other hand, officers require in-depth documentation for record-keeping. Our AI is designed to help craft a detailed timeline, leveraging multiple streams of information and arranging it into the same agency template officers use.

By implementing familiar design patterns, we establish trust between the user and our technology. Our goal isn't to simply inject AI anywhere into our technology; it's to have AI conform to the human way of taking in information. We have the responsibility to meet you where you are.

Motorola Solutions recently launched SVX and Assist, a first-of-its-kind video remote speaker microphone that converges secure voice, video and AI designed for our APX NEXT radio. SVX combines a body camera and radio into a single device and Assist places the power of human-AI collaboration directly into their hands.

Assist can query a license plate or driver's license and automatically search for associated records or warnings, detect keywords in radio traffic such as "shots fired," alert nearby officers and command center staff, and act as a live language translator between officer and community member. Assist also targets some of officers' most time-consuming work.

Our research shows that patrol officers spend 40-60 percent of their time when writing reports entering basic data about people, vehicles and property. By collating data from radio conversations, officer's location, 911 call information, camera footage and more, Assist augments an officer's individual perspective.

Officers' time is preserved so they can spend more of it in their communities, confident in their factually grounded reports and evidence. This launch establishes the path forward for AI in public safety.

AI is more than a science — it's an art. In the beginning, AI was something we added to our existing technology; it was the sugar we sprinkled into our coffee. But as the field evolved, so has the art form, and now AI has become the medium that we use … the coffee itself, so to speak.

With this shift, it's imperative we design responsibly. Even with AI automation, we design for our users to maintain control. Our teams enable this by prototyping our solutions much earlier in the design process.

Customer testing is more iterative and our design teams work side by side with engineering and business teams to understand the possibilities. For SVX, we conducted research and usability testing with 32 agencies across 16 states. This is what I love about Motorola Solutions — creativity is encouraged.

I'm never afraid to propose new ideas because our teams are always eager to test them. This inherent positivity and spirit of innovation allows us to push the limits and create magic — in SVX and Assist and across the company.