My initial role at the Allen Institute was to write the software that was used to acquire the images for the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas. As that project drew to a successful close, my role expanded to help design the instrumentation and tooling that was used to support the subsequent Allen Brain Atlas projects. As the engineering team has grown, my role has become more focused on system integration–making sure that the many different mechanical, electrical, and software portions of a project all work together to create an integrated system.