When software meets hardware and passion meets purpose
When a friend invited Steven Brohl to try out for an internship at Bosch, he saw the opportunity at once for what it was: a chance to apply his wide range of software and hardware skills to cutting-edge products.
The role was in Bosch's RideCare Solutions group. RideCare products give owners of rideshare fleets and ride-hailing cars more control over their vehicles and create a safer operating environment. RideCare devices do things like detect the presence of smoke or the number of passengers in a car, log damage events, record and save video footage in the cloud, and send reports to the owner.
This would prove to be a perfect fit for Steven's skills. A marriage of hardware and code.
Steven's hands had been into devices and gadgets since childhood. He was the neighborhood electronics kid. The one everyone gave their old computers and phones to when they didn't know what to do with them.
"Growing up, people just gave me computer stuff. I built a workshop in my mom's basement. I had all this junk."
Steven bought electronics at the dollar store so he could desolder and figure them out. He took four years of computer-aided design in high school. He started his own computer repair business. He earned college degrees in cybersecurity and network engineering. Along the way, there were hacking competitions, Arduino and Raspberry Pi experiments, coding in Python and Java. He tutored others to help them learn coding and computer security.
While taking a class on hacking and cybersecurity, a friend and Bosch employee suggested he interview for an internship. He saw right away that it was "a natural progression" for what he'd been doing all along.
"I got my foot in the door at Bosch and saw electronics from the bare-metal up and wanted to learn all about this. Growing up, I just wanted to learn how I could make things work and how I could bring ideas to life. I saw that with software and hardware coming together. So, naturally, when I found this opportunity at Bosch I had to take it."
At his new workplace in Plymouth, Michigan, as an associate software engineer, Steven found an electronics lab bearing shelves and walls of semiconductors, transistors, capacitors, resistors, diodes, and spools of wire at any gauge desired. "Anything you can think of — if you want to breadboard something out, if you want to design it from scratch, we have the parts to do it."
Naturally, the work led to innovative recognition. Two patents now bear his name, along with the names of Bosch colleagues.
The RideCare team's work points toward the future, developing AI-driven products and advancing autonomous driving. RideCare insight, a sensor-packed windshield-mounted device that detects smoke, damage, and other in-vehicle events. Armed with such data, fleet managers can better manage their vehicles. The in car enhanced safety solution, RideCare companion offers customers a connected dash cam with interior and exterior view that records and automatically organizes interior and exterior video, a wireless SOS button to connect drivers with Bosch remote-assistance agents and cloud storage that is safe and secure. .
"To me, Bosch is a cutting-edge engineering company. It's not just a tech company. You're not just programming and seeing the algorithms and all that. It's combined. It's hardware and software. We're not only creating the software but we're also manufacturing the hardware that we're co-designing the software for."
A deeper motivation also drives him: The friend who suggested Steven try out for the internship unexpectedly passed away a few years after he got the job — something that has stuck with him.
"I talked to her one week. By the end of the week, she'd passed away. She helped me make it this far. She stuck by me as a mentor and has been my inspiration to stay the course. I owe it to her. All the work I'm doing is dedicated to her."
