Co-ops Help Grow Specialty Medical Device Engineering Firm
With a limited supply of subject matter experts specializing in catheter design on the East Coast, AGILE Product Development, a division of Resonetics, is growing its own talent pool through Northeastern’s co-op program. About one-third of co-ops hired by AGILE have taken full-time engineering positions with the company.
The AGILE Product Development division of Resonetics makes novel catheter-based devices for a variety of therapeutic and diagnostic applications in the heart, lung, brain, and vascular system. The work requires highly technical and specific skill sets that blend engineering fundamentals and creativity to develop components for life-saving procedures.
Northeastern co-ops are playing a key role in growing this business.
“When we get comparable resumes from different schools, there’s just no match for the student with co-op experiences,” says Dave Rezac, E’07, mechanical engineering, and global vice president of AGILE. The AGILE business is the result of Resonetics’ acquisition in 2021 of Distal Solutions Inc., a medical device engineering firm that Rezac founded in 2014.
Rezac says the West Coast and Twin Cities areas are conventionally viewed as the main catheter design centers of excellence in the US medical device industry, resulting in a smaller pool of qualified job candidates on the East Coast where AGILE is headquartered. The co-op program has enabled his team to hire through Northeastern and help grow expertise organically. “The co-op program has been a great tool for us and we actively recruit through it,” Rezac adds. “We have found that Northeastern has a healthy supply of strong talent.”
“If you’re looking for a mid-level engineer, they will be tough to find on the free market regionally,” Rezac adds. “So, we’ve taken the approach of actively developing those resources in-house,” Rezac says.
Since 2018, when Rezac was leading Distal Solutions and through his time to date at AGILE, Rezac has hired about two dozen co-ops, seven of whom were subsequently hired for full-time positions.
While his team works with co-ops, they evaluate students’ potential for a full-time role. “It enables a try-before-you-buy approach for both sides, and we’ve had a strong conversion rate,” Rezac says.
Co-ops also enable AGILE to staff projects with various levels of expertise, freeing up the most highly qualified engineers to tackle the most critical work. “Our customers are coming to us for a high level of service and expertise,” he says. “That is ultimately being driven from the most experienced members of the team, which provide active mentorship and development opportunities to our more junior engineers and co-ops.”
Rezac says he has been impressed with the technical contributions co-ops make. “Contract design services is a fast-paced, high-demand environment,” Rezac adds. “We’ve had many co-ops that are capable of diving right in at the level of a degreed full-time engineer, oftentimes surprising customers when they find out the co-op is still in school.”
Rezac’s own successful co-op experience influenced his decision to establish a program at Distal Solutions/Resonetics. His co-op at TDC Medical, which was eventually acquired by Vention Medical and is now part of Nordson, helped him determine that he wanted to work in the medical device industry and enjoyed the fast-paced nature of contract product development. Prior to that experience, he was concerned there would be too much government regulation and red tape, but the co-op showed him there were plenty of opportunities for creativity and invention. In fact, during his career, Rezac has been named on over 20 pending or approved patents.
“One great aspect of the co-op program is how it helps you mitigate risk in early career development. The worst thing that can happen is you realize a particular role or segment of the industry just isn’t for you, in which case you’ve simply committed 6 months to a key learning opportunity,” Rezac says about co-ops. But in his case, the opposite occurred. “I really fell in love with an industry and role I had been skeptical about.”
TDC Medical hired Rezac upon graduation, where he worked for seven years with mentors who ultimately fueled his desire to start Distal. “When I look back on some of the more fortuitous inflection points of my career, many can be traced to my involvement as a Northeastern co-op,” Rezac says.