RYAN HELSDINGEN
Job Title: Electrical Engineer, PE, LEED AP
Company: Syska Hennessy Group
Location: Denver
Age: 29
Years on the Job: 7
Interests: Enjoys the active Denver lifestyle and training for triathlons. He’s training with the Rocky Mountain Tri Club for the Ironman Boulder 70.3 and a 118-mile, ~11k feet climb bike ride called the Triple Bypass.
During his senior year of high school, Ryan Helsdingen took a digital electronics course, which inspired him to pursue a career in the field of electrical engineering.
“I took a stab at pursuing my electrical engineering degree not knowing how broad the field could be,” he says. “I assumed my career would be a direct pathway to becoming a lab rat debugging circuit boards.”
In the summer between his freshman and sophomore year of college, he was introduced to the power industry by his uncle, who, at that time, was serving as the lead building engineer for one of the most challenging high-rise buildings in downtown Chicago. Helsdingen then landed an internship with Syska Hennessy Group, which was providing the MEP services for his uncle’s project.
“The MEP space opened me up to consulting engineering, targeting power-specific classes in my later years of college, and a so-far gratifying career,” says Helsdingen, who was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs and now works in Denver.
Once he started working full-time for Syska Hennessy Group, he completed a two-year entry-level training program specific to the MEP consulting industry. This program quickly brought him up to speed with weekly internal presentations and a year-end project. “During that time, I rode the train to and from work an hour each way,” he says. “I took advantage of the down time to study for my LEED accreditation, the EIT (engineer-in-training), and eventually my PE (professional engineer) license.”
As an engineer IV with associate title, he works on multiple data centers for a mix of hyperscale and colocation clients and has more than 200MW critical IT load in active design or construction. He focuses on power calculations, load sizing, and distribution management.
