This is the 82nd article in Bears Doing Big Things, a weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
Juan Perdomo ‘15 is an autonomous vehicle integration engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research, where he focuses on developing and advancing systems for self-driving cars.
Perdomo was born in Oakland, Calif., but moved frequently throughout his youth. As a young child, he lived in El Salvador with his grandma for three years and moved to L.A. for middle school and his freshman year of high school. “El Salvador was a very different and unconventional environment to grow up in, but it opened my eyes to new places and cultures from a young age,” Perdomo said.
Perdomo came to M-A his sophomore year and faced a challenging transition. “I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit of a loner and really an introvert when I started M-A,” he said. “I had just moved and didn’t know anyone.”
Towards the end of his sophomore year, Perdomo joined AVID, which he felt was like “becoming a part of a big, happy family.” His AVID teacher, current M-A librarian Catherine Burton-Tillson, was influential in Perdomo’s high school career. “She was and still is like a second mom to me. We even hang out to this day,” he said.
Perdomo also played football his junior and senior years and recalls his favorite class being AP Biology with Patrick Roisen. “Mr. Roisen was amazing. It was one of the hardest classes I have ever taken, but also where I learned the most,” he said.
“M-A was probably the best school I’d ever been to. L.A. was great, but the district was busy, and it was a lot of just cramming kids into schools,” he said.
After graduating, Perdomo attended San Francisco State University where he studied biology, inspired by his experience in AP Biology at M-A, and planned on attending medical school. Perdomo decided to leave college during his junior year due to financial barriers. “It was sad to leave, but I felt like school was always there and I could go back and finish when the time was right,” he said. “I almost felt like an undeclared college student at the time. I wanted to be a doctor or do something hands-on, but I was like ‘Now what?’”
Perdomo got a job at Zoox, a company building self-driving vehicles for urban ride use. There, he worked as a vehicle and software operator, completing autonomous routes to gather data on surrounding objects and testing new software and hardware for vehicle systems. “Zoox is where I found a foot in the door. I learned as much as I could at work and doing my own research,” he said.
Perdomo now works at Mercedes-Benz as an autonomous vehicle integration engineer. “We have a group of about 50 cars that go out every day, and my job is to be a responder to those cars malfunctioning and not working properly,” he said.
Perdomo is also responsible for reviewing logs to identify and fix vehicle issues as well as inspecting computer wiring when there’s a hardware malfunction. “A lot of people think this job requires years of engineering school, but I actually just learned a lot online through my own studying and in job training,” he said.
“If I have any downtime, I shadow other engineers and learn from their experience. Maybe the team did take a chance on me, but I’m constantly learning and growing within my role,” he added.
As for his favorite part of his job, “I love the feeling of solving an issue that would be downing a car for a while, or just getting cars back on the road,” he said. “It’s really hectic, but also very fulfilling helping further our technology in vehicles.”
Perdomo’s advice to current M-A students: “A lot of people feel like if you don’t have a degree you can’t be successful, but that’s just completely wrong. Yes, stay in school and go for a degree, but if you don’t have one, don’t count yourself out.”
To those interested in engineering: “Try to expand your knowledge outside of the classroom. Stay curious, watch videos, ask questions, talk to professionals, and it will all get you much farther than you think.”
