Sr. Principal Technologist (Executive Engineer) Amazon Robotics AI January 2021 - present

   Amazon:  Robotics Senior Principal Technologist, January 2021 – present

• PI for a research project developing ways to architect a critical autonomous system that leverages intelligent optimization algorithms and is verifiable.

• Founded a Safety Center of Excellence and a Technical Advisory Board for Safety to set and ensure a consistent bar is met for autonomous products being deployed into production and to scale safety expertise across critical autonomous products.

• Autonomy Working Group Founder and Lead for senior technical leaders working on autonomous products at Amazon to identify areas of synergy and accelerate progress through knowledge sharing.  

• Provided critical Autonomy and Guidance, Navigation and Controls subject matter expert (SME) review on both a Red and a Gold Team review aligned with Project Kuiper.  Continues to provide SME support to Kuiper.

• Learn & Be Curious by spending time working in operations buildings to learn the different jobs that people do and understand how robotics can help people.  Jobs done to date include pick, stow, AFE (Induct, Rebin & Pack), Smart Pac, Amnesty (AR Floor drive unit fault recovery) and Reliability Maintenance Engineering (RME).

• Started a group for black L8s including a networking forum and came together with others to found ENABLE, a more formalized group.

• Owned the 2021 Item Manipulation Operational Plan 1 strategy document for Robotics AI that led to funding of key manipulation products currently in development.

Flash Autonomous Mobile Robot Chief Engineer, September 2021 – July 2022

• Technical leader for science and engineering teams in ensuring that the technical integrity of a proof of concept AMR. Outcomes include but are not limited to leading the team through the definition and creation of safety analyses and development required to architect and verify the system as safe. The prototype completed the first milestone for safety certification through 3rd party assessor TUV (completion of Preliminary Construction Review).  

   Flash Autonomous Mobile Robot Safety Lead, September 2021 – July 2022

• Defined required analysis and engineering work and lead the science, engineering and safety teams through Safety Case definition and Safety Case Acceptance by the external Assessor in Preliminary Construction Review.

• Wrote Safety 101 paper to help the team and others understand functional safety work across the product life cycle.

• Launched and led the Safety Tiger Team to teach engineers without expertise in safety how to complete fundamental safety work to fill a resource gap.

Aerospace Engineer / Technical Fellow Boeing

September 2000 – November 2002 & November 2004 – January 2021

Boeing Research and Technology Highlights 2019 – 2020

• Technical Domain Leader for the Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Domain, one of Boeings five technical domains at the time.  Leader for defining technology strategy and research portfolio for the company.  Synthesized input from hundreds of technical experts, representing thousands of engineers, into a comprehensive roadmap and strategy providing actionable business insight for the CTO to use to drive the Long Range Business Plan (LRBP) (2019 - 2020)

• Research developing a Vehicle Health Management System leveraging ML to isolate failures (2019 - 2020)

• Defined a standard approach to doing the necessary analysis to enable autonomous systems across products based in the role a person plays in interacting with the system (2019 - 2020)

• Enabled AI Education for all by defining and deploying an AI/ML education site for Boeing employees.  Content was created and curated aligned with different personas to ensure accessibility.  Led the AI / ML Education and Training Committee (2019 - 2020).

• Developed data driven recommendations to increase inclusion in the Technical Fellowship as the Inclusion Subcommittee Lead for the Technical Fellowship Advisory Committee. Incorporated input from diverse representatives across generations to ensure that a variety of ideas are heard and included (2019 – 2020)

Boeing Defense Systems Spacecraft Autonomy Chief Engineer Highlights 2010 – 2018

• Successfully delivered 14 satellites to customers by providing launch and early orbit support on console from the El Segundo Mission Control Center.  Roles varied from Spacecraft Engineer to Attitude Control Systems (ACS) Specialist to ACS Management Assistance Team (2010 – 2018).

• Quickly returned multiple vehicles to service for customers after anomalies occurred on-orbit. Identified immediate required action in a high stress environment at different hours of day and night. Identified the likely root cause then developed and implemented a long-term corrective action. Minimized out of service time and prevented vehicle damage (2010 – 2018).

• Developed an intelligent optimization algorithm to solve a challenging Gain Suppression and Adaptive Nulling problem. Became the Critical Design Review Lead in Gain Suppression and Adaptive Nulling, areas unfamiliar before this task (2017).

• Autonomy focal for a major satellite product-line re-architecture:  Avoided re-work cost of $M by identifying issues with the hardware design of a new data collection unit that would have prevented it from being used for critical high rate data (2011 - 2015).

• Developed methodology for creating a cyber-attack tree by leveraging knowledge of fault analysis to develop a method of analyzing cyber threats (2017).

• Achieved the level of Technical Fellow (2017), Achieved Associate Technical Fellow (2012).

• Led Spacecraft Autonomy Roadmap development. Drove investment decisions that enabled the insertion of innovation. Saved $ on recurring production (2010 – 2018).

• Reduced recurring cost and time for completing fault analysis by leading the Spacecraft Autonomy function to start using a model based tool. This made it easier to use modern techniques such as Bayesian Belief Network Analysis (2013 – 2018).

• Educated hundreds of Engineers by teaching Spacecraft Autonomy 101 and 201 for the Satellite 101 and 201 series (2010 – 2018).

Boeing Defense Systems Spacecraft Autonomy Highlights 2004 - 2010

• Led an analysis effort for a $B constellation when the measured mass properties for the first vehicle were higher than predicted. Performed Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) and led an effort to develop a mass properties envelope for future in family satellites – won employee of the month for this work (2009 – 2010)

• Led the Autonomy Tiger Team to assess and resolve issues impacting Spacecraft Autonomy including: Identifying the impact of issues, coming up with mitigation plans, training and tasking engineers new to Autonomy and planning, scheduling and providing support to ensure programs were executed successfully  (2004 – 2008)
  
  Aerospace engineer, Raytheon Corporation

November 2002 – October 2004

• Used a novel approach to mathematically model a system that had yet to be modeled enabling the development of the controller and gain selection.

• Saved award fee by creating a first time developed autonomous fault management algorithm that was on critical path to meet a significant customer milestone for a classified program
  
  Aerospace Engineer Hughes Space & Communicatios / Boeing Satellite Systes
  September 2000 – November 2002

• 2023 Amazon Science Article “From aerospace to Amazon, Nia Jetter is blazing new paths”

• 2023 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) panel on Responsible AI with industry leaders including Candi Castleberry and Chad Jenkins

• 2023 Panelist on Inclusive Tech Panel moderated by Marc Morial (National Urban League) at Martha’s Vineyard

• 2023 Plenary Talk at IEEE CCTA talk titled “Critical Autonomous Systems, Challenges and Opportunities”

• 2023 Robotics Science and Systems workshop keynote

• 2022 Keynote Speaker for Human Factors Ergonomics Society (HFES) ErgoX Symposium

• 2022 reMARS presentation: Functional safety product development for autonomous mobile robots, link to article, link to presentation on YouTube

• 2022 Southern California Robotics Symposium Welcome Remarks Speaker

• 2022 University of Michigan Undergraduate Robotics Pathways and Careers Speaker Series

• 2022 STEM GEMS Summit Speaker

• 2021 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) “Women of Color: Trailblazing Through Large & Small Companies” panelist, with 79 in person attendees, and attendee survey results:  Satisfaction with Speakers rating 4.5/5.0 and Session Content Positive Impact on Development rating 5.0/5.0

• 2021 Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Robotics and AI track panelist of the closing panel 

• 2020 Boeing Autonomy Panel for the Boeing Technical Excellence Conference

• 2020 California STEM Signing Day Speaker

• 2019 Innovation Quarterly Q & A:  "Nia Jetter uses more than math to underpin AI and data science"

• 2017 Selected as a Real Life Hidden Figure Rocket Scientist to be on half of the nation-wide panels, read Black Enterprise article here.

• 2017 Selected to be in the Boeing video for International Women in Engineering Day

• 2016 Boeing Technical Excellence Conference (BTEC) Talk / Presenter

• 2016 Panelist for "Ask Me Systems Engineering Career Development"

• 2012 Boeing GNC6 Conference Session Chair & Presenter

• 2011 BTEC Talk / Presenter

• 2011 IEEE Aerospace Conference Session Chair

• 2010 AIAA Aerospace Conference Session Chair

• 2010 Best Presentation in session at Boeing CWIT Conference

• 2019 Innovation Quarterly Interview on Artificial Intelligence (p6 -7)

• 2018 Women of Color in Technology Innovation Award

• 2017 Selected as a Boeing Technical Fellow

• Co-lead of Boeing Enterprise Autonomy Community of Practice

• 2012 Selected as a Boeing Associate Technical Fellow

• 2010 February Employee of the month for Technical Leadership on GPSIIF

• 2010 Cash Award for Leadership of the GPSIIF Extended Systems Validation team

• 2009 World Class Engineering Award in Leadership for the GPSIIF Extended Systems Validation team

• 2009 A specially made mug with a picture of a band the quote "My favorite band is L-band" from the GPSIIF Extended Systems Validation team presented for excellence in technical leadership and integrity

• 2006 Women of Color in Technology Rising Star Award

• 2004 Several Raytheon Spotlight Awards including Outstanding Fault Management Design Support, and Telemetry and Command Design

• 2001 Award for volunteer work as an Engineering mentor for King Drew Medical Magnet High School's FIRST Robotics program

• Previously held Security Clearance: SSBI