# Cliff L. Biffle > Making computers, big and small. Location: Berkeley, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/clifflbiffle I have an unusual blend of deep technical abilities and robust people skills. I've been successful at every layer of the stack, from silicon to distributed systems, and from UX to management. I build healthy and inclusive cultures along the way. Let's do something amazing together. ## Work Experience ### 0x Engineer @ Oxide Computer Company Jan 2020 – Present | Oakland, California Joined Oxide when the whole company could still fit in a conference room. There's a lot that happens before the "main CPU" can even power on -- that's where I live. I worked out the strategy, chose the components, drafted and soldered the test boards, wrote the operating system (and the docs!), built the team, co-designed and implemented the platform secure boot architecture, debugged ONE MILLION I2C issues, and eventually shipped big racks of working servers with open-source firmware and no BIOS/UEFI. I also try to act as a resource across the company on: difficult hardware/firmware debugging problems, component selection (particularly in MCUs), safe and unsafe Rust, ARM assembly language and program verification, etc. I've been heavily involved in steering the company culture, starting before I joined (I had suggestions on the interview process and the terms of the employment agreement). We're imperfect but doing pretty decent. ### Senior Staff Engineer, Security, Fuchsia @ Google Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Joined the Fuchsia project with the goal of making it the most secure operating system ever released. Turned out to be a poor fit. ### Senior Staff Engineer / Manager, ML accelerator ASIC @ Google Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 Despite telling "other Bets" in Alphabet that they needed to obtain revenue as independent companies, Google saw our ML effort and simply absorbed it without X having a say. So, I was back at Google for a bit, doing basically the same stuff but with less optimism. In fine Google tradition they subsequently cancelled the thing they had absorbed. ### Senior Staff Engineer / Manager, ML accelerator ASIC @ X, the moonshot factory Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Mountain View, CA Joined one of the projects that grew out of Rapid Eval, building an inference-oriented machine learning acceleration chip for edge applications like robots and cars. Implemented both hardware/RTL and software in five languages (Haskell, Rust, Bluespec, Verilog, Tcl), managing people and projects, setting technical direction, and improving team culture. The first (physically large and tremendously complex) chips off the manufacturing line worked, in part thanks to my verification efforts before we went to fab. As an Alphabet company, X intended to both use this chip and sell it externally, but Google put the kibosh on both by absorbing us. ### Rapid Evaluation Manager / Senior Staff Engineer @ X, the moonshot factory Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Mountain View, CA Took over management (with Phil Watson) of the team responsible for spinning up -- and shutting down -- potential "moonshot" projects. We improved culture and effectiveness, working directly with project teams, X leadership, and stakeholders across Alphabet. Rapid Eval started more projects under our watch than in its entire four-year history up to that point...none of which I can talk about yet. I was promoted to Senior Staff Software Engineer during this time. I appear as a side character in the Atlantic article linked below. ### Founder, Flight Systems Tech Lead, Project Loon (Staff Sw.Eng.) @ Google Jan 2011 – Jan 2015 | Mountain View, CA I co-founded Project Loon in 2011 with Josh Weaver and one other. In Phase 1, we had to prove feasibility and secure funding. I was responsible for most engineering, building the first stratospheric wifi balloons in two weeks -- including hacking the Linux wifi stack, building the sensors and datalogger, implementing long-distance RF tracking/telemetry, and ground control. It worked on the first flight. In Phase 2, we had to make it real, growing from 3 to 100+ people over four years. I hired engineers to replace myself in most areas, while I focused on avionics and sensing. I wrote our high-reliability distributed embedded framework (C++11) and the production system that ran atop it, including telemetry over the Iridium satellite network. I then continued leading engineering while hiring and training a team of ten to take it forward. The system has proven robust over thousands of flights to this day. Along the way, I personally supported hundreds of production flights, including debugging and patching firmware during flight and in the field. I was issued 31 US patents. My promotion to Senior Staff, nearly two years after leaving Loon, cited the continued robustness of the technical decisions I made during this time. ### UX Prototyper, Project Glass (Senior Sw.Eng.) @ Google Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Mountain View, CA During the early stages of Glass, I was part of a UX prototyping team under Thad Starner. Ed Keyes and I built the first system that resembled its present form and was comfortable enough for all-day wear (Ed was mostly hardware, I was mostly software). At the time I joined, Glass prototypes ranged from backpack- to helmet-sized and couldn't show notifications from your phone; the final product looks an awful lot like our protoype, albeit with a camera (something I argued strongly against). From my colleagues on Glass I learned a lot about digital electronics design, display technology, Bluetooth, Android, miniaturization, speaking truth to power, and how to solder tricky little QFNs whose package must remain optically clear but will fog if overheated. ### Senior Software Engineer, Native Client @ Google Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 | Mountain View, CA Native Client is an entirely new approach to software security that lets untrusted (even malicious) code run harmlessly on existing operating systems. It has been described by Google software engineers as "crazy crashed-flying-saucer technology." For organizational reasons it has been primarily used to run games in web browsers. So it goes. The NaCl folks and I had talked earlier, but their original focus on x86-32 didn't interest me; they eventually poached me once an ARM porting effort started. I helped with the initial port, writing the instruction set validator and working on the LLVM-based compiler and runtime. We eventually beat the performance of the x86 version despite not having any hardware support -- we were within 2% of unsandboxed code on SPEC. I helped design the mechanisms for dynamically inserting and removing code (critical for shared libraries) and for generating and modifying code on the fly (critical for languages like Java or JavaScript). From these crazy-smart folks I learned basically everything I know about compiler internals, optimizations, self-certifying and proof-carrying code, the ARM family microarchitectures, and the importance of a small trusted code base. I left NaCl only because Google[x] happened. ### Software Engineer III, Ads Review @ Google Jan 2006 – Jan 2009 | Mountain View, CA I worked in the AdWords unit for 3.5 years writing large distributed Java systems that filtered out bad ads. My team dramatically improved the automation rate -- total costs saved and revenue from new markets we enabled added up to many hundreds of millions of dollars. From this team I learned a lot about text processing, machine learning, distributed systems, and user experience design -- not to mention how to engineer code with a team that was larger than the biggest company I'd worked for. I was promoted from Sw.Eng. II to III to Senior during this time. ### Programmer/Analyst II @ Choice Hotels International Jan 2004 – Jan 2005 | Phoenix, AZ Worked on OLTP/OLAP systems that drive the Choice Privileges loyalty program; some web work; minimal reservation system work. I was responsible for the integration with Bank of America, on Choice's side, for the co-branded Choice Privileges VISA card. Choice was the first "big company" environment I worked in, and I learned a lot about what to do (and what not to do) on large teams. This was my first real exposure to what would later be called SOA, and my first time working with a rigorous team who placed value on things like design specifications, unit tests, agility, and hot failover. Google successfully poached me from this job. ### Senior Developer @ Global Internet Solutions, Inc. Jan 2003 – Jan 2003 | Tempe, AZ Developed and supported e-commerce sites for several well-known Phoenix companies. Managed a team of two programmers. ### Founding Partner, Senior Developer @ Extrasensory Applications, Inc. Jan 2002 – Jan 2003 | Phoenix, AZ Startup to take on Ticketmaster through the new (at the time) idea of "mobile paperless ticketing." A few years too early in hindsight. I learned a lot about business operations, accounting, and in particular the importance of business development and networking to the success of even upstart, disruptive operations. ### Senior Developer, Systems Administrator @ AZSites LLC Jan 2001 – Jan 2002 | Tempe, AZ Full-stack e-commerce development using PHP, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL. Managed a team of programmers and graphics designers on coordinated projects. Left (with my dev team) when the paychecks stopped. ### Interface Developer @ Network Safety Group Jan 1999 – Jan 2000 | Scottsdale, AZ Returned to the reformed Network Safety Group and resumed role developing firewall/network configuration software, this time in Java/Swing. Developed high-performance Java cryptography code for interpreted (1.1) JVMs, and subsequently reoptimized for HotSpot (1.2+). Designed cryptographic communication and key distribution protocols for resistance to replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. ### Programmer @ Cobalt Creative, Inc. Jan 1999 – Jan 1999 | Scottsdale, AZ Developed client applications in DHTML, ASP, JavaScript, Visual J++, VBScript, Visual Basic, and Flash. Supported graphics designers, including some Photoshop/Fireworks work. This was a summer job during college. ### Senior Windows Programmer @ Network Safety Corporation Jan 1993 – Jan 1998 | Cave Creek, AZ Developed and supported WebElite, one of the first commercially-available HTML editors, initially on Win16 and later on Win32 and NT. Developed Windows-based firewall and network configuration software for the NetNAT line of firewalls, on WinNT 3.51/4.0 and Win95. Participated in an apprentice role in the design of cryptosystems, communication protocols, and the invention and early development of network address translation (NAT). My employment here was interrupted by my graduation from high school. ## Education ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Psychology Arizona State University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/cbiffle - Portfolio: http://cliffle.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/clifflbiffle JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/clifflbiffle/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-10