NUWC Division, Keyport Employee Spotlight: Erik Rydbom

Sustaining our warfighting advantage requires a dedicated team of experts committed to Fleet readiness. Among these experts is Erik Rydbom, a seismic modeling and simulation lead engineer at Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport.

“Erik is a pleasure to have as an employee, and he delivers tremendous value to Keyport and the Navy’s mission,” said his supervisor.

“Erik possesses an infectious enthusiasm for modeling and simulation,” added a coworker. “When people ask how to develop complex models, Erik is our go-to expert. He's incredibly eager to share what he's learned. He has a rare, excellent teaching quality. He can take overwhelming, complex systems and calmly, patiently explain them to anyone.”

“He's very driven and knows his stuff. He’s definitely a good guy to work with, very personable,” said another coworker.

Erik was born and raised in Federal Way, Washington. From a young age, he loved putting things together and making models out of balsa wood. After high school, he worked in the construction industry before deciding to return to school in his late 20s. While attending Bates Technical College in Tacoma, he discovered a passion for mechanical engineering and decided to pursue a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Washington State University Bremerton.

While working on his capstone project at WSU—an advanced fluid dynamics analysis sponsored by Keyport—Erik learned about the work being done at the command.

“I got a feel for what it’s like to be an engineer at Keyport and the sort of research and development work the command does,” said Erik. “And that was like a golden bell to me. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I can do some innovation and be creative and use a lot of my skills. This is really, really cool. I can't wait to work here.’”

Erik graduated in 2020 and planned to start working at Keyport immediately afterward. However, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a delay in his plans. He used the extra time to earn a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from WSU in Pullman. He completed his degree in 2022, just in time to begin his current role at Keyport.

Shortly after coming onboard, Erik played a key role in standing up new, high-fidelity modeling and simulation capabilities at the command. Erik eventually helped secure a multi-year contract with Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, for which he serves as lead engineer.

Erik regularly returns to WSU Bremerton as a senior design mentor teaching advanced fluid dynamics and propeller simulation to undergraduate engineering students.

By helping ensure the structural safety of submarines during maintenance, Erik’s work at Keyport directly supports the second and third Naval Sea Systems Command Enterprise Strategy Lines of Effort: “Generate Readiness” and “Generate, Capture and Use Data.”

Outside of work, Erik enjoys snowboarding, disc golf and other outdoor pursuits, often in the company of his German Shepherd mix, Nova. He also plays guitar and continues his lifelong hobby of building balsa wood models. (He’s currently working on an airplane.)

-KPT-

Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport is headquartered in the state of Washington on the Puget Sound, about 10 miles west of Seattle. To provide ready support to Fleet operational forces at all major Navy homeports in the Pacific, NUWC Division, Keyport maintains detachments in San Diego, California and Honolulu, Hawaii, and remote operating sites in Guam; Japan; Hawthorne, Nevada; and Portsmouth, Virginia. At NUWC Division, Keyport, our diverse and highly skilled team of engineers, scientists, technicians, administrative professionals and industrial craftsmen work tirelessly to develop, maintain and sustain undersea warfare superiority for the United States.