· About

Design, engineering, and fabrication as one continuous loop.

I'm Eli Pacciolla, a prototyping and design engineer with an industrial-design degree and a fabricator's hands. I design the form, lay out the PCB, write the firmware, and fabricate the enclosure, whether that means 3D-printed PETG or TIG-welded stainless. I came to the US from Italy at 16 to pursue a career in hardware.

My work lives where three disciplines usually stay siloed. Most people hand industrial design, embedded hardware, and fabrication between separate people; I treat them as one process, which is why I can take a product from a sketch to a working prototype I actually trust. Based in Oakland, CA. Trilingual: English, Italian, Spanish.

Eli soldering electronics as a kid in 2014 Eli soldering electronics today

Soldering in 2014, and today. Some things don't change.

01 Capabilities

A full stack, from surface model to soldered board.

Industrial Design

  • Form, CMF & human factors
  • User research & synthesis
  • Design for Manufacturability
  • Basic GD&T

Hardware & Electronics

  • Custom PCB design (EasyEDA)
  • Protected analog front ends
  • Dual-processor architectures
  • Sensor integration, I²C / UART / SPI
  • Structured bring-up & debugging

Firmware & Software

  • C++ (ESP32, Arduino framework)
  • Python
  • Linux, shell, SSH, Docker
  • State machines & node trees
  • Local LLM inference (Ollama)

CAD & Tools

  • SolidWorks & Fusion 360
  • Rhino & Grasshopper
  • Blender (render & materials)
  • Fusion CAM (CNC)
  • Adobe Creative Suite

Fabrication

  • TIG welding (gas-tight stainless)
  • MIG, sheet metal forming
  • FDM 3D printing (PETG, TPU, PLA)
  • Laser cutting & etching
  • Soldering (SMD & through-hole)

Languages

  • English: native
  • Italian: native
  • Spanish: conversational

02 Background

I've been taking things apart, and building better ones, since I was a kid.

I grew up in a professional metal-fabrication shop, learning TIG welding on gas-tight stainless (and the occasional exotic alloy), MIG, and sheet-metal forming from people who do it for a living. It was a self-directed apprenticeship, not a class, and it is why I think in manufacturability from the first sketch forward.

My electronics habit started at 12, and it started with Star Wars. I was obsessed, so I taught myself enough electronics to build custom lightsabers, turned it into a small business my dad invested in, and sold them through the comic shop in the rural Italian town I grew up in. The tinkering never stopped: fixing, picking apart, and rebuilding is just how I understand things.

That combined background is the point. When I designed Artemis Nomad, I didn't hand the enclosure to one person and the board to another. I ran the research, laid out the PCB, wrote the firmware, modeled the enclosure, printed it, and brought the whole system up myself.

03 Education

  • 2024–2026San Francisco State University · B.S., Industrial & Product Design
  • 2020–2023Peralta Community College District · Berkeley City College (primary). Transfer coursework toward the B.S.
    • See the work → View Resume ↓