# Alex Thompson > Autonomous Driving Software Engineer at Cyngn Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/alexthompson Engineer, former mathematician, working in IoT and robotics. Languages and frameworks: C++, Python, Jenkins, ROS, Jupyter data science stack (scikit-learn, NumPy, SciPy, Plotly etc), PostgreSQL. ## Work Experience ### Robotics Software Engineer @ Cyngn Jan 2019 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Primarily maintaining and extending Cyngn's vehicle simulations, including: - maintaining and extending the simulation software - working with QA to add new scenarios, and improve the daily simulation checks on master - adding reporting capabilities that summarize simulation performance, in collaboration with autonomy engineers ### Sabbatical @ Sabbatical Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area I joined Nauto as #19, grew with the company to #190, so it was time for a break! ### Head of Driver Behavior, Data Science @ NAUTO Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area I direct the Driver Behavior Team, which creates Nauto's vehicle dynamics processing algos and risk algorithms, and provides data support for Nauto's insurance partners. Nauto is funded by Greylock Partners and Softbank. • Expanded the Driver Behavior team from two to four extraordinarily talented algorithms experts. • Took a nebulous scope of work, and defined a cohesive, progressive roadmap for the Driver Behavior team, addressing product needs with multiple algorithmic paths, each supporting the other. • Led the team in executing this roadmap across five product release cycles. • Coordinated with ENG teams and algorithms teams to define specs, standards for release, and process of deployment, as well as find opportunity for creative combinations of algorithms. • Tracked and unblocked progress for my scrum team in daily stand ups and other meetings. • As an individual contributor, developed and released a major revision to Nauto's risk scoring algorithm, in coordination with cloud and front end teams on new interactive UI elements displaying risk scores. • Together with a fantastic engineer, created a major piece of infrastructure to enable algorithms to compensate for individual vehicle variation. Public talks: • Panelist, The Future of Telematics Risk Prevention, TU Connected Car, September 5th, 2017 ### Data Scientist @ NAUTO Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area I work in a dual role, first and foremost as a data scientist leading Nauto's risk scoring efforts. And second, in sales, building partnerships and acting as a technical liaison with leading insurers, insurance service providers, and insurance consultants. As a data scientist, I: • Scoped, conceptualized, and designed four versions of Nauto’s risk estimation algorithm, VERA. • Coordinated the efforts of seven staff across Android, backend, frontend, data science, and design teams to implement VERA’s data collection, implementation, and UI/UX. • Designed, trained off bootstrapped data, and implemented engineering to deploy VERA scoring models in production. Principal tools: Python, sci-kit learn (sklearn), Docker. As a sales and implementation manager, I: • Participated in or lead over 100 partner pitches and discussions, including top tier insurers. • Collected feedback and requirements from potential partners on VERA. • Design and negotiate proposals for partnerships, including pilot scoping and pilot evaluation criteria. • Very occasionally meet informally with investors and board members to discuss risk assessment. ### Data Scientist Fellow @ The Data Incubator Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 One of only 46 fellows chosen from 1,807 applicants to complete rigorous seven week data science curriculum. - Completed 34 homework assignments covering Python, web scraping, data munging, XML parsing, Pandas, Bokeh, Flask, and other libraries. - Programmed jobs on AWS using both MapReduce (MRJob) and Spark with Scala. - Used the scikit-learn Python library to do high dimensional linear regression, K-means, and other forms of machine learning. - Worked with NTLK to analyze n-grams in combination with MapReduce. - Munged and analyzed 6 million+ collision records for California for my capstone project: http://onebilliondollars.herokuapp.com/ ### Account Manager @ Engrade, Inc. Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Santa Monica, California I'm served in a dual role. First, as an account manager managing a portfolio of high profile school districts. And second, as a departmental process guru, helping to streamline and scale account management processes! - Served as the single point of contact for a portfolio of clients, guiding them through syncing their systems with Engrade, training their staff, and reporting bugs and submitting feature requests. - Guided the transition of account management to a new CRM - Developed and implemented strategies for improving client services. ### Development Operations Manager @ Green Dot Public Schools Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 I oversaw operational aspects for Development at Green Dot Public Schools. - I coordinated a 600+ attendee award show, the Second Annual Golden Dot Awards, held at the prestigious - I managed the Development and Communications Associate, one heck of an employee who I was happy to work with. - I tracked all aspects of our fundraising. This included: --- maintaining and administrating our CRM (Salesforce), in collaboration with the Development and Communications Associate, conducting grant research; and --- providing and analyzing data to support our applications; and --- tracking grant, grant reports and other key projects as they approached deadlines; and --- inevitably, troubleshooting the myriad of unique and challenging situations fundraising produces. ### Donor Relations Analyst @ Green Dot Public Schools Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Los Angeles I managed three major projects as project lead, all involving large consulting contracts and senior staff. I project managed a winning $11.7 MM federal grant application, including collecting and drafting support letters, organizing and reviewing drafts, coordinating with grant writing consultants, and sending team updates. I collect, analyze and summarize Green Dot achievement data, including generating comparison data, for grant applications. I’m currently managing an overhaul of our Development processes, including customization of our Salesforce CRM, which tracks all grants and fundraising prospects. ### Board Member, Community Director @ Mar Vista Community Council Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 ### President @ Bikeside, 501c4 Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | Greater Los Angeles Area I direct the activities of LA's only 501c4 bike lobby as we inject cycling issues into elections, evaluate the progress and work of Los Angeles, and stir up cyclists to make LA bike friendly! ### Co-Founder @ Bikerowave Jan 2006 – Jan 2011 | Greater Los Angeles Area Founded Bikerowave, and led it from a small volunteer run organization to one of the top LA bike institutions, with over 30 active volunteers and 100 inactive. ### Statistical consultant @ Daniel & Beshara PC Jan 2008 – Jan 2011 On behalf of Daniel & Beshara PC and Inclusive Communities Project, prepared a statistical analysis of Texas affordable housing which showed that affordable housing practices by Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) were defacto racial discrimintation. I also prepared the key expert witness for this testimony for his deposition. This analysis and the deposition helped win the case, and led to a judgement against TDHCA, ultimately upheld by the US Supreme Court. ### Research Assistant @ UCLA Jan 2003 – Jan 2008 I studied problems in the area of Descriptive Set Theory at the direction of my doctoral advisor, Greg Hjorth. Ultimately I obtained a significant new result which was published in the Journal of Symbolic Logic with me as sole author. ### Teaching Assistant @ UCLA Jan 2003 – Jan 2008 Teaching undergraduates in a variety of mathematical areas, primarily probability and calculus. ## Education ### PhD in Mathematics UCLA ### MS in Mathematics Carnegie Mellon University ### BS in Mathematics Carnegie Mellon University ### Data Science The Data Incubator ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexcthompson - Portfolio: http://alexthompson.ai/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/alexthompson JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alexthompson/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-10