The Engineer Behind the Work
Don Lariviere
Principal Engineer, Fat Dog Industries
"I've never met a machine I didn't want to understand."
Don Lariviere has been taking things apart since he was a kid — not to break them, but to figure out how they worked. That curiosity never left. It became a career.
Over more than three decades of professional engineering work, Don has designed mechanical systems, built embedded electronics, debugged production failures, reverse-engineered hardware with no documentation, and solved problems that stumped entire teams. He's worked across industries — automotive, robotics, industrial automation, consumer electronics — and the common thread has always been the same: find out what's actually happening, then fix it.
Career Timeline
Started professional engineering career
Began working in electronics and mechanical systems, building the foundation of a cross-disciplinary practice.
Automotive & powertrain engineering
Deep work in automotive systems — engines, drivetrains, suspension — developing an intuition for how mechanical systems behave under real-world stress.
Embedded systems & electronics
Expanded into microcontroller-based systems, PCB design, and firmware development as electronics became central to every mechanical product.
Robotics & automation
Applied both disciplines to robotics and industrial automation — designing the mechanical structures, the electronics, and the control systems that tie them together.
Fat Dog Industries
Independent consulting practice based in Los Angeles. One engineer. Every problem taken seriously.
Why both disciplines matter
Most engineers specialize. That's fine — depth matters. But a lot of real-world problems live at the boundary between mechanical and electrical. A motor that fails might have a mechanical cause, an electrical cause, or both. A sensor that gives bad readings might be a circuit problem or a mounting problem. When you hire someone who only knows one side, you get half the picture. Don knows both sides.
Beyond the Work
Curiosity as a way of life
Don's engineering instincts didn't come from a classroom alone. They came from years of building, breaking, and rebuilding — cars, computers, robots, electronics, anything that could be understood through careful observation and systematic thinking.
That same instinct is what makes him effective as a consultant. He doesn't just apply known solutions to familiar problems. He looks at what's actually in front of him, figures out what's really going on, and works from there.
Based in Los Angeles, Don works with clients across industries — from startups building their first hardware product to established manufacturers trying to understand why something stopped working.
Work with Don
If you have a hard problem and need an engineer who will actually dig into it — not delegate it, not hand it off, not give you a generic answer — let's talk.