Jon Evans

Hands-on and product-focused engineering manager, open-source software developer, musician, lighting enthusiast.

Currently based out of Boston, MA, USA.

Portfolio Contact

What I Do

Electrical Engineering

Now: Leading the electrical engineering team at Formlabs. Responsible for the success and growth of the team as well as the electronics architecture for 3D printers and accessory products.

Past: Lead electrical engineer, Olympus analytical instruments division. Responsible for electronics architecture, circuit and PCB design, embedded firmware, and project management for advanced X-ray fluorescence analyzers.

Lighting Projects

Developed the FireMix open-source software tool for procedurally-generated animation on sparse arrays of addressable LEDs. This system has powered art installations built by me and others and shown at FIGMENT Boston, the Firefly arts festival, Burning Man, and Dropbox HQ.

FireMix development is currently suspended as the project achieved its original goals. Further development will depend on having new applications with new requirements.

KiCad EDA

Member of the lead development team for the most popular and capable open-source EDA tool, KiCad. I am responsible for a number of key features, performance upgrades, and UX improvements in recent KiCad versions. I also do user research investigations to help determine development priorities, and assist new developers in ramping up to contribute to the KiCad project. My goal is to see KiCad be a suitable choice for professional PCB designers in almost any situation, and at the same time keep a reasonable learning curve so that KiCad continues to be an excellent choice for students, hobbyists, and junior engineers getting in to the field of electronics.