Steven Palmquist

Senior Member of Technical Staff

Key Responsibilities

Work with SEI civil and defense agency customers to acquire, evolve, support and retire software-intensive systems

Professional Background

Steve is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) (Electrical), a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and is certifed in The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) 9.

Joining the SEI in 2000, Steve initially worked in the Program Integration Directorate (PID), principally supporting the Dynamic Systems program. In 2002, he joined the Acquisition Support Program (ASP), and in 2003 he was named ASP's first Chief Engineer for Civil and Defense Agencies. In his role as Chief Engineer, he frequently led and/or supported multi-disciplinary SEI teams in executing Independent Technical Assessments, or ITAs, of large, software-intensive government programs.

In 2009 he voluntarily stepped down as Chief Engineer to move back to his home state of Minnesota but remains a fulltime Senior Member of the Technical Staff.

Before joining the SEI, he served over 20 years as a program manager, engineer and helicopter pilot in the U.S. Coast Guard. As a helicopter pilot, he flew over 3,000 hours and was twice honored as the Naval Helicopter Association's "Rescue Aircrew of the Year". A commercial-rated pilot as well as a Naval Aviator, he is a graduate of the National Test Pilot School (Avionics).

As an engineer and program manager, he managed the HC-130H AN/APS-137 Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) program and was the Avionics Technical Director for Project Delphi, the Congressionally-mandated integration of an USN E-2C airborne early warning (AEW) weapons system with a USCG HC-130H long range surveillance (LRS) aircraft.

His final tour was on the Integrated DeepWater System as one of the principal architects of DeepWaters innovative structure, which at the time was designated a Government Reinvention Lab.