Meet Craig Andera, Principal Engineer at Kevel, as he shares insights on engineering challenges, his passion for robotics, and what sets Kevel’s culture apart. Based in Fairfax, Virginia, Craig has been with Kevel since 2017, bringing his wealth of technical expertise and a maker’s mindset to the team.
“I was in consulting for almost twenty years,” Craig shares. “I worked at some of the largest companies in the world -- places like Microsoft, Honeywell, Target, and so forth. Consulting taught me a lot, but I was looking to do product work at a smaller company, with a group of excellent engineers, using technologies that I was interested in.”
Kevel’s size and people-first values were exactly what Craig was looking for. "After talking with James, Kevel checked all those boxes -- it was only about fifteen people at the time I joined in 2017," he recalls. "James had created a very humane company. By that, I mean it got right the thing that I'd seen be wrong at so many other places: realizing that success and treating people well are not incompatible."
Craig is focused on scaling Kevel’s infrastructure to support its growing customer base. "Recently what I've been working on is overhauling the reporting systems. It's kind of my main task right now and I find that to be quite interesting," he explains. "The reporting systems are obviously a key piece for us. If our system does stuff, great, but if our customers don't know what it did, then that's no good."
With Kevel’s rapid growth comes increased technical complexity. “Our growth has meant that system has come under increasing load, and so we’re trying to get ahead of it as we move to bigger and bigger customers,” Craig says. “A lot of the work that I've done over the last few years here has been about taking an existing system and allowing it to go and serve bigger customers.”
According to Craig, embracing uncertainty is a key part of engineering. He recalls mentoring a younger engineer: “We were talking about how to make decisions, and I said, 'At some point, you don't know. And there's maybe three or four ways to do it. So you use your experience and your gut to guide you towards a solution.'"
Her response surprised him. "She said, 'I just always assumed that the people with more experience really knew the right way.' And the answer is no, we don't always know. Sometimes we do, but sometimes we're like, 'we don't really know any more than we know right now, so we're going to go with this.’”
"I think it actually does start with being a good colleague," Craig reflects. "For anybody you work with, you really want three things: you should be looking for if somebody is smart, if they get things done, and if they're easy to work with. And if you can choose only two of those, actually smart is the least important one."
He emphasizes that effectiveness and collaboration matter more than raw intelligence. "I've worked with smart people who couldn't get things done. I've worked with smart people who could get a lot done, but they weren't easy to work with,” he explains. “Try to be easy to work with, try to get things done, try to actually deliver what you say you're going to deliver."
Craig devotes his free time to mentoring the next generation of engineers through competitive robotics. "Outside of work, my life is pretty much consumed by coaching high school students on a FIRST Robotics Competition team. It takes up something like 30-50 hours a week from around November to May every year," he shares.
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His team has achieved impressive results under his leadership. "We've managed to qualify for the World Championships three years in a row now," he says proudly. The challenge is no small feat: "The robots are about a yard or a meter square and they weigh up to 150 pounds. For all of them, the challenge is given out at the same time to everybody in the world. Everybody finds out at the same time what the game is going to be and then you have a short amount of time to build a robot that plays that game."
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When robotics isn't in full swing, Craig channels his creativity through making. "A lot of my time goes into making things. I'm a hobby machinist and have an extensive shop at home, with a variety of woodworking and metalworking tools," he says.
He enjoys being part of Kevel’s maker community. "I enjoy sharing [projects] in our makers channel in Slack, and seeing what other people have made as well. I've even had people who have moved on to other jobs tell me that one of the things they miss about Kevel is seeing all the cool projects people share," Craig shares.
Recently, he used his laser cutter to create a commemorative coin for a friend. "I'm currently engaged in renovating my entire basement to make it into a shop. I've got a metal shop, lasers, wood shop, a kiln for ceramics, and 3D printers," he adds, highlighting the breadth of his creative interests.
"I am grateful that Kevel is the sort of place that provides me the flexibility to run out to pick up an order of aluminum during the day when I need to," Craig explains. "Especially since the robotics team focuses on building the next generation of engineers, and on instilling in them the values that I see present at Kevel, like putting people first, teamwork, and respectful cooperation."
Craig appreciates Kevel's humane approach to business. "One example I love is even before it was made into a US Holiday, James actually gave the entire company off the holiday Juneteenth, which is a US Holiday representing the end of slavery in the US," he notes. "Another great example is the unlimited PTO. There's just an attitude here that we care about people. You're not a cog."
