Hello! 👋

I'm Kevin Pham

Principal Electrical Engineer • High-density Compute & Power • Consumer Electronics

Portrait of Kevin Pham

About Me

Life is short, so I always operate with some overshoot - there’s a tradeoff, but you get there a bit faster! Proactive technical lead with strong consumer, enterprise, and military electronics background. Over the last 10 years, I've released multiple 0->1 hardware designs for high-performance compute clusters and racks, SoCs with multimodal workloads, FPGAs, MCUs, WiFi/BT/5G radios, cameras, displays, batteries, acoustic-quality speakers and microphones, multi-modal sensors, cables, flexes, heatsinks, and more. I am skilled at navigating ambiguity and transforming complex, nuanced, multidisciplinary requirements into real world products with millions of users. This ownership starts with product definition and trade studies in the early ideation phase, engaging and influencing stakeholders, and continues through managing CM/JDM partners and building up mass production capability overseas. I was an early member of the Apple AirPods team in 2015, where I developed our optical and capacitive sensing features and defined a modular hardware platform enabling Apple and Beats headsets to ship multiple product lines with differentiated features year after year. I'm proud to bring my limitless curiosity, strong work ethic and effective communication to work, and always eager to tackle projects that bring transformational change to everyday life.

Altium Allegro KiCAD LTSpice Keysight ADS STM32 Solidworks Python Ansible Terraform Memfault Prometheus Grafana Proxmox VE Docker Linux TrueNAS Ceph K8s Astro

Projects

Bitcoin miners: Mining Development Kit, Proto Rig, Fleet
01

Bitcoin miners: Mining Development Kit, Proto Rig, Fleet

Three generations of ASIC blade server motherboards and network card design for air, oil, and liquid-cooled Bitcoin miners, in partnership with CoreWeave and Core Scientific.

AltiumJMPSTM32LinuxPSUASICAnsibleTerraform
Bitkey
02

Bitkey

Bitkey is the safe, easy way to own and manage bitcoin. It's a mobile app, hardware device, and a set of recovery tools for simple, secure self-custody without passphrases.

AltiumPythonSTM32MemfaultLi-ionFuel gaugeNFC
Project IVAS
03

Project IVAS

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) is an augmented reality headset being developed by Anduril Industries and Microsoft for the United States Army.

AllegroCamerasDisplayPCIeJDMGMSLWiFi5GHDIRFPCFPCQualcommLi-ionTyphoon
Hololens 2
04

Hololens 2

Microsoft HoloLens 2 is a mixed reality head-mounted display developed and manufactured by Microsoft.

AllegroCamerasDisplayEMISIPIMPReliabilityEFFA
Homepod
05

Homepod

Apple introduces the new HomePod with breakthrough sound and intelligence, enhanced Siri capabilities, and a safe and secure smart home experience.

AllegroLEDsCapsenseMLBAcousticsPSUPSoCALSWake Word
Airpods Pro, Airpods Gen 2, Airpods
06

Airpods Pro, Airpods Gen 2, Airpods

Three generations of Airpods design: contributions across MLBs, SiP, Bluetooth SOC, FPGA, battery, sensor, acoustic, capacitive, force, and optical sensing.

AllegroSiPRFPCBTBTLELi-ionVCSEL/PDPSoCPMICCharging CasePDMAudio Precision

Consulting

Kismet Labs logo
kismet \ ˈkɪzmɪt \ : an unexpected, fortuitous encounter

| Hopefully this is one for your hardware roadmap.

I'm happy to provide electrical engineering design and program management services based upon my experiences designing multiple 0->1 and 1->1 million+ products at the largest tech companies in the world.

I work with teams that need a strong electrical engineer who can own hard problems end-to-end — from architecture all the way through production — or focus on a single, well-defined task such as manufacturing test or supply chain communication.

Typical work can include any, or all of these areas:

  • Architecture definition and partitioning
  • Schematic capture and design reviews for complete system or subsystem
  • PCB layout reviews and SI/PI guidance
  • Bring-up, validation, and lab debug
  • Manufacturing test strategy and fixture reviews
  • Python scripting, data pipelines, and simple GUI tooling
  • Schedule and NPI planning, risk identification, and test/documentation review
  • Supply chain communication, onsite build support, or technical vendor management
  • Delegation and guidance for your EE team, contractors, or factory CMs
  • Resume review and interview support for candidate FTEs, contractors, and interns

Engagements can be as narrow as a single design review, or as broad as full program ownership – we define scope to match exactly what your team needs. If you don't see your exact need listed, feel free to ask.

I use a structured consulting model so you can choose according to your team and budget — from high-ownership hourly retainers to scoped, fixed-fee milestones. You don't have to know exactly what you need on day one.
Actual scope and pricing is always tuned to your program requirements, timelines, and internal team strength.

Tier Scope of Work Weekly Hours Rate
TIER 0:
Consulting Period
  • Short, low-risk discovery period where we both evaluate fit.
  • I review your current hardware, roadmap, and open issues.
  • We clarify which tier (1-3) makes sense and define an initial scope.
  • Capped at 10 hours over 2 weeks.
  • Mix of async review + live working sessions.
  • $150/hr.
  • Best for new clients before committing further.
TIER 1:
Principal Owner
for High-Impact
  • Full ownership from architecture → SCH → PCB → bring-up → EVT/MP.
  • I manage all design, test, and debug and can be as hands-off or collaborative as you like as a fractional hardware lead.
  • System-level risk and technical direction owned by me.
  • Hours defined by you, can be full-time, part-time or short-notice fire-fighting.
  • High-touch availability with fast response; think an on-call SLA for your hardware.
  • Retainers start at $16k/month for part-time, exact structure based on scope + urgency.
  • Best for critical programs, high-stakes bring-up, or teams that want a single technical owner for hardware execution.
TIER 2:
Advisory or Scoped
Engagement
  • Partial ownership such as design reviews only, schedule definition and risk surfacing, supplier contact, manufacturing test or design of a specific subsystem.
  • For example, I advise or augment a specific area; your engineers own implementation, lab work, and day-to-day bring-up.
  • Typically ~10–20 hrs/week.
  • Limited availability (not always same-day), focused on high-impact checkpoints.
  • $250–$300/hr based on scope and complexity.
  • Best for teams with tight but flexible budgets.
  • Best for senior guidance while keeping other execution in-house.
TIER 3:
Milestones w/
Fixed Fee
  • Fixed deliverables such as schematic package, layout review, or bring-up support for a specific board or block.
  • No collaboration hours; scoped outcomes only.
  • Ideal for constrained budgets or discrete project phases.
  • Hours are variable and tied to each milestone.
  • We agree upfront on what 'done' looks like and how we'll interact.
  • To be quoted after a short scoping call; will be appropriate for your team size, task complexity, and schedule pressure.

Interested in working together?

Share a bit about your project, timeline, and where you need the most help. I'll typically respond within 48 hours.

Experience

Block (parent of Square)Block (parent of Square)

Staff Electrical Engineer

Block (parent of Square)

Nov 2022 - Present
  • Directed multi-MW data-center readiness as mining platform lead: custom circuit design + deployment of 100k+ blade-servers with 3nm TSMC ASICs
  • Collaborated with thermal, mechanical, ID, firmware, manufacturing test, contract manufacturers, operations, and marketing for production readiness
  • Managed and mentored team of electrical engineers, PCB layout designers, and site deployment technicians across US, Canada, and APAC
  • Released BitKey in internal startup effort as lead EE in new hardware division, a NFC-paired secure embedded system with 10-yr battery life
Microsoft

Lead Hardware Engineer

Microsoft

May 2019 - Nov 2022
  • Led electrical design of new distributed headset for $21B Project IVAS with US DoD: 3 foot high-speed link
  • Custom design of PCBs, FPCs, RFPCs, cables, and connectors for SIPI of SoC/display/cameras/WiFi/5G radios and batteries
  • Developed multiple manufacturing test and software solutions for PCIe, DisplayPort, MIPI, USB3.0 custom interconnect
  • Research of FPGA prototypes for custom silicon, glasses form-factor, GMSL camera link and optical aggregation
  • Served as forward-deployed lead engineer and technical liason at U.S. Army trials
Apple

Senior System Integrator

Apple

Jan 2015 - May 2019
  • Exploratory design for AR/VR: Bluetooth, soft goods, sensing, audio, received spot bonus and patent award
  • Senior EE for system/capsense/optical for AirPods (>50M units) and HomePod (>1M units), with 8+ trips to APAC
  • Released main logic boards and modular dev boards for custom silicon on FPGA

Education

Stanford University

Masters in Electrical Engineering and Machine Learning

Stanford University

2016 (part-time)
  • Completed simultaneously while at Apple and Microsoft
  • Coursework in Deep Learning, AI, CNN, TinyML, ADC Design, DSPs, Controls, Algorithms
The University of Texas at Austin

Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering

The University of Texas at Austin

2012
  • Completed 18 hours of graduate courses: Computer Arch, Nanoscale Device Physics, RFIC Design, VLSI Design
  • Entrepreneurship Final Design Project: A Point-of-Sale Restaurant Backend and Frontend