Title: Senior Signal Engineer
Company: STV Inc.
Location: Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, United States
James Joseph Entenmann, senior signal engineer at STV Inc., has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Engineers for dedication, achievements, and leadership in transportation and signal engineering.
For 30 years, Mr. Entenmann has found a deep sense of satisfaction in his work as an engineer — a professional path that runs in the family. One of his grandfathers was an engineer, and his brother became a mechanical engineer, while Mr. Entenmann chose to pursue electrical engineering. Initially entering the industry as an assistant engineer, he worked in the electronics field, designing frequency generators, inverters and power supplies.
In 1996, Mr. Entenmann’s late wife noticed a newspaper advertisement mentioning job openings at the Long Island Rail Road and encouraged him to apply despite not having studied signal engineering. He applied, passed an entrance exam and was hired as an assistant signalman. This began Mr. Entenmann’s esteemed 25-year tenure with the Long Island Rail Road, where he rose from his initial role to such positions as signal inspector, signal training specialist and senior signal designer. By 2019, he was promoted to engineer of signal design, effectively operating as the group’s co-lead signal engineer and manager of the design department.
Mr. Entenmann’s journey throughout his career has been particularly unique, as he started in the field as a signalman, trained as a specialist and then moved into engineering. Most signal engineers enter the job without hands-on experience, and there is no formal signal engineering school or training in the United States. With his extensive experience, Mr. Entenmann has been able to stand out by drawing on a deep well of broad knowledge in how to safely design railroad technology. This has been a key to his success, as railroad signaling systems are very complicated, and any errors could lead to accidents and serious harm.
Stepping back from the Long Island Rail Road in 2021, Mr. Entenmann dedicated four years to working as a senior signal engineer at AECOM. Since 2025, he has served as a senior signal engineer for STV Inc. Mr. Entenmann’s responsibilities include developing hardware designs for railroads and writing code for software to interface with those designs. He frequently collaborates with other engineers, ensuring that extensive checks are conducted for the design of vital systems.
Among his career accomplishments, Mr. Entenmann fondly recalls some of the biggest projects he has worked on. While at AECOM, he contributed to the Hudson Tunnel Project, which added two new tunnels from New Jersey into Pennsylvania Station in New York, an effort during which some 2,000 hardware design drawings were created and 10,000 lines of code were written. Mr. Entenmann also played a crucial part in the Long Island Rail Road’s Third Track Project, which saw the addition of a third track from Hicksville, New York, to Queens. As the co-lead engineer of the signal design department at the Long Island Rail Road, he ultimately oversaw approximately half of the organization’s major projects while his colleague managed the other half.
In addition to the uncommon route he traveled to his current role, Mr. Entenmann had an unusual path through his education. He earned an Associate of Applied Science in electrical, electronic and communications engineering technology from DeVry University in 1985. Mr. Entenmann originally began his studies in computer science but chose to change to engineering later. This led to him running out of student loan funding before he could obtain a bachelor’s degree, at which point he transitioned directly into the workforce.
Beyond his career, Mr. Entenmann is a caring father to two daughters and grandfather to two grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys hunting, fishing and traveling by trains, especially in Europe. Mr. Entenmann loves his work and looks forward to continuing to contribute to exciting projects at STV Inc.
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