Support Staff

David Janos, Quality Assurance Manager

Dave Janos joined Vista Photonics in July 2017. He has been working in Quality/Mission Assurance at various levels and positions over the years, with most of his career in the Aerospace industry. David comes to Vista Photonics with 40 years of experience in Quality Management Systems, with a strong background in NDT. He has worked with numerous government agencies over the years including all military branches, NASA, and FAA Repair Stations. David has worked on special projects such as the Atlas, Minute Man, THAAD, SM1, SM3, and Orion, as well as many other projects during his career. Other projects include refueling outages for several nuclear power plants and electromagnetic interference field units/mobile shelters for the Military. He has performed numerous audits as Lead Auditor in the Aerospace industry for compliance audits for NADCAP, ISO and AS 9100. As the QA Manager, Dave is responsible for the implementation, training, maintenance, and auditing expertise for company and customer quality standards. .

Hector Chavez, Associate Electrical Engineer

Hector joined Vista Photonics in July 2017. He is a graduate of the University of Texas, El Paso with a BS in Electrical Engineering where he focused on renewable energy, electronics and microelectronics, signal processing, and circuit design. After completing the NASA ESD Level 1 course, Hector became the ESD Facilities Monitor. He is in charge of maintaining all ESD requirements to ensure compliance with ANSI/ESD and NASA standards. Hector has also completed Soldered Electrical Connections Through-Hole and Surface Mount courses to become certified in IPC and NASA standard, and holds a certification to Workmanship Standard for Crimping Interconnecting Cables, Harnesses, and wiring to NASA standard.

J. Taylor Pilgrim, Quality Assurance Specialist

Taylor Pilgrim joined Vista Photonics in November 2017. He attended both New Mexico Junior College and Santa Fe Community College, and worked as a Field Service Technician at Comcast/Xfinity prior to joining the company. Taylor is a member of the American Society for Quality and has received Certified Lead Auditor training. He works with the QA Manager to ensure our focus on customer quality improvement activities across the organization. He performs and coordinates internal quality audits with the QA Manager and assures appropriate levels of corrective actions. Taylor also oversees Government Property Management and assists with purchasing, IT support, administrative systems maintenance, special projects, and customer service.

Ivan White, Software Engineer

Ivan joined Vista Photonics in June 2018. He graduated from New Mexico State University with a BS in Electrical Engineering, specializing in signal processing, communications, and integrated circuits. He also earned a Masters in Electrical Engineering, with graduate research focused on optical localization using image differencing in the visible spectrum. He is familiar with C/C++, Python, and Swift programming methodologies, and has a background in VHDL/Verilog design principles. As the Software Engineer, he works with the Chief and Research Engineers to turn new design concepts into completed hardware systems using high-performance FPGAs.