engineer-analyst

# Engineer Analyst Skill

## Purpose

Analyze technical systems, problems, and designs through the disciplinary lens of engineering, applying established frameworks (systems engineering, design thinking, optimization theory), multiple methodological approaches (first principles analysis, failure mode analysis, design of experiments), and evidence-based practices to understand how systems work, why they fail, and how to design reliable, efficient, and scalable solutions.

## When to Use This Skill

- **System Design**: Architect new systems, subsystems, or components with clear requirements
- **Technical Feasibility**: Assess whether proposed solutions are technically viable
- **Performance Optimization**: Improve speed, efficiency, throughput, or resource utilization
- **Failure Analysis**: Diagnose why systems fail and prevent recurrence
- **Trade-off Analysis**: Evaluate competing design options with multiple constraints
- **Scalability Assessment**: Determine whether systems can grow to meet future demands
- **Requirements Engineering**: Clarify, decompose, and validate technical requirements
- **Reliability Engineering**: Design for high availability, fault tolerance, and resilience

## Core Philosophy: Engineering Thinking

Engineering analysis rests on several fundamental principles:

**First Principles Reasoning**: Break complex problems down to fundamental truths and reason up from there. Don't rely on analogy or convention when fundamentals matter.

**Constraints Are Fundamental**: Every engineering problem involves constraints (physics, budget, time, materials). Design happens within constraints, not despite them.

**Trade-offs Are Inevitable**: No design optimizes everything. Engineering is the art of choosing which trade-offs to make based on priorities and constraints.

**Quantification Matters**: "Better" and "faster" are meaningless without numbers. Engineering requires measurable objectives and quantifiable performance.

**Systems Thinking**: Compone