Ryan Hill ’08 and ’11
Mechanical Engineering
Vice President/Site Lead
Integrated Systems for Solutions Inc.
Tell us about your role as vice president and research mechanical engineer with Integrated Solutions for Systems Inc.
I’m blessed to serve as both a research engineer in a technical capacity and as a vice president and site lead in a leadership role with Integrated Systems for Systems Inc. (IS4S). When I wear the research engineer hat, I get to work on high-end R&D and testing programs for the federal government, focusing primarily on munitions, UAVs, advanced explosives formulation, explosives testing, warheads, novel and explosive 3D printing, ballistics and more. We’ve built a testing and engineering center from the ground up into a multi-site, multi-range facility employing more than 40 engineers doing cutting-edge work for the U.S. military.
When people ask what I do, I usually sum it up by saying, ‘I work with explosives and blow stuff up.’ While blowing things up is fun, what I love is working on next-generation military technologies — the kinds of things you read about in news stories or defense blogs.
When I wear the vice president hat, I focus on operations, safety, logistics, financial management and the regulatory aspects of running multiple test sites and ranges. It’s extremely demanding, and sometimes highly stressful, but immensely rewarding.
The best part of my job is the team — a group of high-caliber people I get to mentor, develop and grow alongside. I’m honored and humbled to lead and work with such talented, hardworking professionals — many of whom are fellow Auburn engineers.
You’ve risen through the ranks at IS4S, and this year, you earned a spot on the Auburn Alumni Association’s 20 under 40 award list. How did Auburn Engineering prepare you for your career?
Auburn Engineering was foundational in helping me be immediately valuable to IS4S by providing a broad experience that extended well beyond the classroom.
When I joined IS4S, the company had just 23 employees. Working for a small business means wearing many hats — it’s an entrepreneurial environment with limited people and resources. You must get the work done and help grow the company, often learning new things in real time. At Auburn, I learned a lot of life lessons and soft-skills through the activities I participated in as a student — undergraduate research, student employee, co-op, internship and student organizations.
Using the foundation of both a quality education and the other skills I’d learned, I found myself contributing instantly in ways that benefited my growth and the company’s. As IS4S grew, my roles evolved, and I now serve in a leadership role as a vice president and site lead for our Opelika office, and our company now has more than 450 employees and continues to rapidly grow. All of this I can attribute to the strong foundation I built while at Auburn.
Your work involves a great deal of emerging technology. How did Auburn Engineering prepare you to work in a constantly evolving field?
In graduate school at Auburn, I worked in the GPS and Vehicle Dynamics Lab (GAVLAB) under Dr. David Bevly — one of the world’s foremost experts in position, navigation and timing and objectively one of Auburn’s best professors.
Working under Dr. Bevly gave me exposure to people, opportunities and technologies I might never have encountered otherwise, and it started to push me to think of other creative ideas and novel concepts.
Dr. Bevly taught me how to balance some of those cool or crazy ideas with sound engineering discipline. For every new technology or big idea, there are countless hours of hard work required to make it real.
Through my time in the GAVLAB, I learned to push myself into new areas while maintaining the discipline needed to turn concepts into tangible solutions. That balance between creative innovation and disciplined execution is essential to achieving any kind of success when working with emerging technologies.
What attracted you to Auburn to study engineering?
I have the same story that many engineers have: I had no idea what I wanted to be, but I liked math and science. Everyone would tell me that engineering was hard, but I love a good challenge, and I was drawn to the prestige and respect that comes with making it through an engineering curriculum. Also, I didn’t know at the time what I wanted to do career-wise and I knew engineering would keep a lot of doors open. My dad is an Auburn engineer, went to medical school and then joined the Navy, so I knew that an engineering degree offered versatility and options post-graduation.
Hailing from Alexander City, I had dreams of moving far away for college, and I looked at a lot of engineering schools across the country. But when I visited Auburn, I just had that feeling that I already knew where I was going. I felt at home. Auburn gave me a comfort level unlike anywhere else, and Auburn University offered so much more than just a great engineering degree. It offered a total experience and an opportunity to grow not only as an engineer but as a person.
Looking back, being an Auburn engineer is so much a part of my core that it’s hard to believe I ever thought about being anywhere else or doing something different.
