A VERTICON conversation: Igor Cherepinsky The Sikorsky Innovations director explains the mindset behind his company’s culture. By Mark Huber “We run like a start-up,” says Igor Cherepinsky, director of Sikorsky Innovations. “When we recruit, we try to find people with the mindset where they are open to working on engineering problems, people who like working on aviation and vertical lift but are also open to working on other things. “One day I can go from wearing a suit and briefing vice presidents on what we’re doing to putting on jeans and going to the hangar and working on control systems, writing code, or designing hardware. That’s the neat part of it,” Cherepinsky continues. “We try to find people like that who can do everything—software engineers doing demos, driving ground stations, developing code. You name it, we do it.” While the company’s recruits have solid technical backgrounds—they come to Sikorsky Innovations from leading engineering schools and from within parent company Lockheed-Martin—they include those who say, “What you’re working on is cool.” The core of Sikorsky Innovations comprises around 60 direct reports, but the organization can reach into the larger Sikorsky enterprise and grab people as needed. Over the past year, 200 to 300 people were working on Innovations’ current crop of projects, which includes the Matrix flight autonomy system, the rotor blown wing unmanned aircraft system (UAS), and the hybrid-electric demonstrator (HEX) family of tiltwing aircraft, as well as aircraft sizing, systems, and new-product development, including Black Hawk modernization. “It all comes out of Innovations,” Cherepinsky says. The day-to-day feel in Innovations is informal but intense. Some engineers work in T-shirts. They work collaboratively, with offices adjacent to lab space. “We’re open to ideas; some would say crazy ideas,” says Cherepinsky. “But unlike a tech start-up, we have a much more defined mission—to develop new products for the vertical lift mission of Sikorsky.” Upper management understands the process and gives his group the freedom to succeed. While this has resulted in safe flight test programs, sometimes, when obstacles are confronted, the group “has to pivot,” Cherepinsky says. “But as long as we’re doing this fast and safe, things are fine.” While the team thrives on the intensity, it also does fun things to relieve stress, such as bringing in pizza and flying remote-control airplanes and helicopters. Cherepinsky’s current personal favorite is his fully aerobatic 700-size electric helicopter. “It’s fun right up until you do something wrong and it crashes,” he says. Mark Huber is an aviation journalist with more than two decades of experience in the vertical flight industry.
