Hi, I'm James!

I grew up in the Los Angeles area and studied mechanical engineering at MIT, where I also met my now-wife Sharlene. We graduated in 2019 with our bachelor's degrees and now live in San Francisco.

My interests include design, tech (and criticism thereof), sustainability, and transportation. In my free time, you might find me riding my bike, making photos, reading, or just spending time with friends and family.

AI tools can be useful for many things, but I take pride in personally writing and editing all content on this website. Any slop here was written by me 🙃

You can reach me via email at me@james.li.

I am looking for my next role in systems engineering, product engineering, or (maybe) product management!

My ideal job would be somewhere I can continue developing my systems engineering skills while also having the flexibility to explore designing and defining products (the "what gets built"). Bonus if the company is working on electric transportation or clean energy storage.

Work experience

My resume (February 2026) (PDF)

• Currently: Taking an extended sabbatical!

• Butlr Technologies (Feb 2021 - Jan 2025)

  Design Engineer → Systems Engineer → Senior Systems Engineer

  Butlr is an MIT Media Lab spinoff startup that makes a camera-free indoor occupancy sensor for commercial real estate and assisted living settings.

  I was recruited as an early employee by CEO Honghao, who had been my research supervisor at the Media Lab in 2016.

  My work included:

  • Deployments at key early customer sites
  • Our first system for tracking and fulfilling orders
  • MVP touchscreen UI for our Hive 1 product
  • Mechanical design iteration for the Heatic 1 product
  • Heatic 2+ product development start to finish: Requirements, sensor characterization, concept design, system design, prototyping, hardware and firmware testing

• Atelier Ten (Aug 2019 - Jan 2021)

  Design Staff

  A10 is an environmental design and engineering consultancy that provides expertise to architecture firms and other stakeholders on high-performance sustainable building projects.

  My work included:

  • Whole building embodied carbon analysis
  • Systems modeling: Water reuse, onsite PV and BESS
  • Daylighting, visual comfort, and thermal comfort modeling
  • LEED certification
  • Client communication

• Internships:

  • Divergent 3D (Jan 2019)
  • Ford Motor Company (Summer 2018) — Research and Innovation Center
  • Piaggio Fast Forward (Summer 2017)
  • MIT Media Lab (Summer 2016) — City Science group, Amoeba Wall project