Executive Profile: Austin Rivera CTO of Vara Safety

Firearm Safety equipment manufacturer Vara Safety recognizes Austin Rivera for outstanding leadership and contributions to the company.

Rivera has spent six years in the field of small scale, high-value consumer product manufacturing. In previous roles, he designed, prototyped, and prepared multiple products for production. As a product design engineer at Vara Safety, Rivera brought his expertise to develop a prototype product for manufacturing, independently sourcing both a domestic and international supply chain. Over the past year at Vara, Rivera has stepped into the executive leadership position of Chief Technology Officer, continuing is work on the core product while seamlessly growing and managing a team of engineers. Currently, Rivera has stood up Vara Safety's first production facility and will now facilitate the transition from a contract manufacturer to in-house capabilities. In addition to these duties, Rivera and his team have prepared five patents that are currently pending with the USPTO. With the foresight to develop new technologies and product lines while maintaining current goals, Rivera has proven indispensable to the team at Vara.

"I love working for a small company, with some hard work and perseverance, you can change the world," commented Rivera.

Outside of Vara Safety, Rivera continues to stay busy! In addition to being a CTO, he is also a Captain in the United States Air Force, where he is a pilot for the 109th Airlift Wing, New York Air National Guard. In this position, Rivera provides arctic airlift capabilities from pole to pole with the world's only LC-130H aircraft, a specially modified C-130 equipped with skis. Previous duty with the 109AW includes deployments for Operation Deep Freeze and Operation Raven Dew. When he is not engineering or flying, Rivera likes to spend time with his wife Meaghan and his three dogs. You can usually find him working on some new projects around the house or just building something for fun.