At Juno, we tailor and scale our suite of services to meet and exceed the needs of our clients. With automation being a significant driving force in modern electrical engineering, we knew it was time to strengthen and enhance our automation capabilities. We also knew that Udara Waraketiya was the engineer for the job.
A native of Sri Lanka, Udara earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Moratuwa in 2008. He then joined a semiconductor startup company, where he worked on circuit design and layout for a novel FPGA architecture.
A chance meeting with a professor from the University of Calgary led to him coming to Calgary to join a research team. Udara completed his master’s thesis in electrical engineering in 2013 where he designed a broadband beam notch filter for a radio telescope. During this time, he also took courses in PLC-HMI systems at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Upon completion of his masters, Udara opted to stay in Calgary and accepted a position with Juno in 2013. For the next two and half years, he was involved in an array of oil and gas projects, including the programming and commissioning of the first successful SAGD pilot in Peace River region.
The 2015 downturn motivated Udara to explore new opportunities, leading him to the automotive manufacturing industry in Windsor, Ontario. When asked how automotive projects differ from oil and gas projects, Udara explains: “In the process industry, you deal with values that change slowly over time, and you try to identify trends over six, twelve, or even twenty-four hours. In automotive, the timing is in millisecond intervals, and you need to track events that happened within the last two seconds.” He embraced the challenge, and over the next ten years, he expanded his expertise through several complex assembly line retool projects for new vehicle launches, managing demanding schedules and both safety-critical and mission-critical PLC architectures.
Despite his success in Windsor, Udara missed Calgary (and its sunshine). When the opportunity arose to bring his wife and young daughter back out West and rejoin the Juno team as the lead of the growing Automation Services team, he happily accepted it.
We, too, are very excited to have him back. During his first stint with the company, Udara quickly proved himself as a fast learner, highly adaptable in field environments, and deeply committed to delivering quality work. His drive for continuous improvement has been evident from the beginning, and he has seamlessly reintegrated into Juno’s culture, embodying our team values and contributing to our positive interpersonal dynamics.
Welcome back Udara!
