Meet Our Founder

With more than 31 years of engineering leadership experience spanning both the automotive and aerospace industries, Ide Ehigiato has dedicated his career to helping engineering organizations build safer, more robust, and more reliable products by identifying technical risks before they become costly problems.

Prior to founding Fortitron, Ide spent more than 16 years at Sikorsky Aircraft (a Lockheed Martin company), where he served as both Principal Engineer and later Design Engineering Manager, leading cross-functional engineering teams responsible for the design and development of mission-critical rotorcraft systems. Throughout his career, he has led engineering organizations, managed complex product development programs, and driven initiatives that improved design quality, engineering processes, and program execution.

One of Ide's most significant contributions at Sikorsky was leading the effort to expand the use of Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (DFMEA) within the Engineering organization. He authored Sikorsky's engineering procedure for FMEA, trained engineering teams across the company, facilitated DFMEAs for multiple engineering organizations, and co-authored the technical paper Safety and Product Robustness in the Air Vehicle Design Process, presented at the 79th Annual Forum of the Vertical Flight Society in 2023.

Before joining Sikorsky, Ide spent 15 years in the automotive industry, where rigorous engineering disciplines such as DFMEA, PFMEA, APQP, DVP&R, PPAP, and Design Reviews formed the foundation of product development. That experience provided a unique perspective that he later applied to aerospace engineering, helping bridge proven automotive risk reduction practices with the demanding requirements of mission-critical aerospace systems.