Comprehensive Design Services

From First Schematic to Final Certification

PDE joins your product team to solve complex product challenges and accelerate time-to-market. From first schematic to final certification: one integrated team.

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What We Deliver

Core Services

Organized by discipline. Delivered as integrated solutions under unified project management. Security and compliance are cross-cutting capabilities, not add-on services.

Full Service
Product Development

Complete product definition from concept through manufacturing handoff. Industrial design, electronics, firmware, cloud, and regulatory pathway, architected as a unified system.

Full-cycle Multi-disciplinary Integrated
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Hardware
Design

Schematic design, digital and analog circuits, PCB layout optimized for manufacturing, thermal, and EMC. Power systems, battery management, and DFM analysis.

Altium OrCAD PADs DFM/DFA
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RF &
Wireless

RF circuit design, antenna matching, cellular (LTE/5G), WiFi, BLE, LoRa, Z-Wave, and NFC. In-house RF testing with owned chamber and spectrum analyzers.

TI Elite In-House Testing
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Mechanical
Design

Industrial design, enclosure engineering, thermal management, IP67 sealing, electromechanical integration, and 3D prototyping. Optimized for manufacturing reality.

SolidWorks Pro-E FDM Prototyping
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Firmware &
Embedded

Bare-metal C/C++, RTOS (FreeRTOS, ThreadX, Zephyr), embedded Linux, FPGA (Verilog/VHDL), bootloaders, OTA updates, and ultra-low-power optimization.

ARM Cortex-M STM32 MSP430 PIC8
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Software
Development

Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), mobile apps (iOS, Android), web applications (Angular, React), backend services (Go, C#, Node.js), REST APIs, and database design.

Full-Stack IoT ATE Software
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Compliance &
Certification

40+ products certified. FCC, ISED, CE, VCCI, KC, PTCRB, and carrier approvals (Verizon, AT&T). Design-for-certification methodology with >90% first-pass success.

Pre-Compliance EMC Debugging
Connected
Products & IoT

Unified hardware-firmware-cloud development. Secure bootloader, encrypted communications, cloud scalability engineering, multi-tenant data isolation, and fleet management.

Security-First Scalable Device-to-Cloud
The Problem

The Challenges Product Teams Actually Face

Hardware product development is challenging. Even with the best designers projects can get derailed because of coordination, dependencies, and vendor fragmentation.

Critical Skill Gaps

Your project demands RF design, EMC compliance, or FPGA architecture. These skills are critical for 3 months, then unused for 12. Hiring full-time doesn't make financial sense.

PDE's Answer

Pre-vetted specialists who integrate with your team from day one. No ramp-up. No hand-holding required.

Bandwidth Constraints

Your team maintains the existing product line. A new product initiative demands disciplines and bandwidth your current team can't absorb.

PDE's Answer

Add capacity without the six-month hiring cycle or permanent overhead. Scale up for critical phases, then scale back.

Multi-Vendor Coordination

Hardware from one firm, firmware from another, compliance from a third. Nobody owns the integration. When something breaks at the interfaces, you get finger-pointing.

PDE's Answer

One unified team, one point of accountability. Integration is designed into the process, not bolted on afterward.

Timeline Pressure

Competitors are moving. Your launch date is firm. You need acceleration without technical debt that compounds the cost of your next iteration.

PDE's Answer

Experienced hands who anticipate problems before they become schedule disasters. Pre-compliance testing eliminates certification surprises.

Vendor Lock-in

You complete a project with an external partner. You have a working product. But all the knowledge is in their heads. You can't modify the design without them.

PDE's Answer

Documentation at every phase gate. Knowledge transfer throughout. Your team owns the product intellectually and practically.

Integration Failures

In connected products, security, cloud scalability, and regulatory alignment are architectural requirements from day one, not features added after hardware design is locked.

PDE's Answer

Security and compliance embedded as core design decisions across hardware, firmware, and cloud simultaneously.

How We Work

Our Development Process

Every engagement follows a structured, phase-gated approach. Hardware rigor combined with Agile flexibility for software and firmware. Documentation and knowledge transfer at every phase gate.

1

Discovery & Scoping

Requirements deep-dive, risk assessment, feasibility study, and transparent budget alignment. You receive a phased execution plan with named team members.

2

Concept & Architecture

System architecture, technology selection, proof-of-concept validation, certification roadmap, and security design decisions for connected products.

3

Design & Development

Detailed design across all disciplines, prototype builds, continuous integration testing, and design reviews at critical milestones.

4

Testing & Iteration

Functional validation, pre-compliance EMC testing, environmental stress testing, and design refinement before committing to certification.

5

Certification & Production

Regulatory submissions, certification lab coordination, manufacturing documentation, production test procedures, and handoff to your contract manufacturer.

6

Deployment & Support

Manufacturing launch support, post-launch debugging, comprehensive knowledge transfer, and ongoing technical assistance as needed.

The Difference

How We Avoid Common Pitfalls

Your skepticism is warranted. You've experienced promises that didn't materialize: experienced people during scoping, different people in execution. Multiple vendors, no clear owner when integration breaks. "Seamless integration" requiring you to do the integrating. Vendor lock-in disguised as partnership. PDE's structure is designed as the antidote to these problems.

Team Continuity

You meet the best people during scoping, see their expertise and problem-solving. Then contract signing happens, and those people disappear. You get someone requiring months to ramp.

How We Work

Team members are assigned ownership roles at project kickoff and serve as your technical points of contact throughout. Team continuity is backed by 8.8-year average team tenure.

Multi-Vendor Headaches

You find experts in their field who know what they're doing, but they are all working on their isolated portions and not communicating. The mechanical designer doesn't know about the latest revisions to the PCB that the electronics designer made or the firmware developer doesn't know about the new MCU part variant the electronics designer selected.

How We Work

Integration failures don't happen because integration is designed into the process from day one. Our designers talk to each other and share information.

Vendor Lock-in

Your design partner does a great job, they deliver a beautiful, functional product that your customers love. However, when it comes time to make version two and you decide to get your own team together, you find out you need their permission to work on your own project.

How We Work

Every design file, source code file, and documentation file is yours. No licensing restrictions. No ongoing fees to access your own product. Knowledge transfer is built into every project.

Expertise Loss

You had a successful engagement with a product design company, your product is making you money, and it's time to transition to your own engineering team for future projects. However, when your new engineers start working on rev 2.0, they can't make heads or tails of the design decisions made in the first revision and the documentation is nowhere to be found.

How We Work

PDE operates with transparency. We record our decisions and discussion in Jira and Confluence and give you access, so that when it comes time for someone else to take up the reigns they don't have to waste time and money figuring out why things are the way they are.

Management Overhead

You engaged with a product development company because you needed to fill gaps in knowledge, but now you're spending all your time making sure that a bunch of disconnected contractors are in sync rather than coming up with the next killer feature for your product.

How We Work

PDE's got you covered: Your Account Owner handles commercial alignment. Your Project Owner drives technical execution. You don't manage PDE designers; the AO/PO structure handles coordination, allowing you to focus on what matters.

Technical Capabilities

Tools & Partnerships

Hardware & PCB
Altium Designer OrCAD PADs SolidWorks Pro-E
Development
VS Code Visual Studio STM32CubeIDE MPLab X Code Composer ModusToolbox Simplicity Studio IAR
FPGA
Vivado Design Suite Quartus VHDL Verilog
Processors
ARM Cortex-M STM32 MSP430 PIC32 Silicon Labs TI
Protocols
UART SPI I2C CAN bus Modbus TCP/IP BLE WiFi Cellular LoRa Z-Wave NFC
Cloud & Software
AWS Azure Google Cloud Docker Angular React Node.js Go Python C#
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Elite Design House Elite Design House
Arrow ACES Trusted Design Partner
AMD AMD Partner Network Partner Network
Renesas Design House Partner
DigiKey Digi-Key Design Service Provider Design Service Provider
Frequently Asked Questions

Questions Clients Ask

Can you work with existing teams?

Yes! Many of our clients have internal teams with deep product expertise and market knowledge. They engage PDE when their product requires integrated multi-discipline execution, specialized capabilities like RF design or compliance, or dedicated design depth for a critical product cycle. Our AO/PO structure ensures coordination without management burden. Your team works directly with PDE designers.

What is your typical engagement like?

Most start with a focused phase, discovery or high-level design, that lets both sides validate fit. Some engagements are a single certification push. Others span a decade. We recommend starting small and building confidence.

How does intellectual property on our project work?

All design work product is yours. Source code is yours. Design files are yours. Documentation is yours. No licensing restrictions. No ongoing fees to access your own product. Complete documentation at every phase gate ensures your team understands the design and can implement modifications independently.

What is your pricing model?

Time-and-materials with clearly scoped phases. Each phase has defined deliverables and a transparent budget. No surprise invoices. No scope creep without explicit agreement.

What industries do you have experience in?

Commercial, industrial automation, medical technology, defense and security, consumer electronics, telecommunications, and energy/power systems. The common thread: complex products requiring multi-disciplinary engineering.

Where are you located?

Burnaby, BC (Greater Vancouver), Canada. We serve clients throughout North America. Our hybrid model and full design lab support both remote and in-person collaboration.

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