# Jacob Richards

> software @ discord 👾

Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/jacobrichards

Jacob Richards is a software engineer and professional drummer. He has been writing software for over 10 years, spanning from scientific computing to product and infrastructure. He is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Discord, where he works on ads. His musical work can be heard on NBC's New Amsterdam, Showtime’s Yellowjackets, and on numerous acclaimed records.

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ Discord
Jan 2022 – Present | Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
- scaling our ads business.
- built tools for self-expression that impact millions of people who are finding belonging on Discord.
- built financial platform tooling to scale creator payouts, and filed a patent for one such tool.

### Staff Software Engineer @ Mothership
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
leading a team, planning + executing projects across the stack, steering engineering practice + culture.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Mothership
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Los Angeles, California, United States
building the future of freight. nodejs + typescript, python, GCP, AWS, express, typeORM, redis, kafka, react.

### Software Engineer @ Bird
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Greater Los Angeles Area
- Built core product features impacting millions of users, including acceleration/speed control, and highly configurable coupons.
- Architected new microservices in Kotlin and participated in a breakout of the Ride service from a legacy monolith, configuring SQS jobs, a Dropwizard API, and Terraform, as well as untangling Gradle and Bazel dependencies.

### Software Engineer @ Preducks
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Greater Los Angeles Area
- Built an Electron app that generates React/Redux/Typescript boilerplates, leveraging Electron’s cross-platform desktop compatibility.
- Expanded and optimized Webpack configuration to reduce bundle size and support both Electron and web as build targets.
- Integrated Typescript to ensure type safety and consistent structural implementation throughout the project by designing interfaces to document and enforce the expected shapes of function parameters and the Redux store, and to catch errors at compile time.
- Implemented a D3 tree graph in React that dynamically updates based on a prototyped React component hierarchy, providing visual feedback for building complex applications in React/Redux.
- Leveraged Redux’s predictable and centralized data store to collect and update complex user configurations describing the desired structures of their application’s React/Redux architecture and to allow for time-travel debugging.
- Utilized React Hooks to reuse stateful logic between components, easily manage local state, and avoid deep component tree nesting.
- Wrote unit tests with Jest to decrease unexpected outcomes from UI edge cases, expedite refactoring and addition of new features, and to enable continuous integration with TravisCI, which minimized technical debt through testing at every granular update of the application.

### Software Engineer @ Palgorhythm
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Greater Los Angeles Area
- Utilized the C# Video Player API in Unity to ship an iOS/Android 360 music video app that switches between randomized video clips synchronized to music, relying on Unity’s support for cross-platform build targets.
- Leveraged the Google VR Unity API and Unity’s high-performance video support to implement gaze click, device accelerometer integration for viewing angles of the 360 video, and touch interactions.

### Curriculum Developer @ GEC Academy
Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | Beijing, China
- Curriculum developer and instructor
- Developed and taught courses in Unity/C# Game Design and Python. 
- Built out the first software engineering courses for the company that continuea to be used widely across China for intensive courses geared toward children aged 10-18.

### Curriculum Developer @ Digital Media Academy
Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | Palo Alto, California, United States
- Curriculum developer and instructor. 
- Taught and developed curriculum for Python, robotics, electronics, 3D printing, and music production.

### Research Assistant @ Berkeley Lab
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | 330 Hesse Hall, UC Berkeley
- Implemented statistical algorithms in Python to minimize sensor deployment in a smart lighting system.
- Optimized for maximum predictive power using Mutual Information/covariance algorithms on large datasets with SciPy/NumPy.
- Co-author on paper summarizing research in the Society of Photonics and Optics (SPIE) Journal.

### Research Assistant @ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Pasadena, California
- Implemented state estimation algorithms in MATLAB for Micro Air Vehicles (drones).
- Trained a neural network on 3D force sensor data in a gripping system for the International Space Station and satellite maintenance.


## Education
### Bachelor of Arts - BA in Applied Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude)
University of California, Berkeley
Jan 2010 – Jan 2014

### Bachelor of Arts - BA in Music (Summa Cum Laude)
University of California, Berkeley
Jan 2010 – Jan 2014

### Master of Fine Arts - MFA in Jazz & Music Technology
California Institute of the Arts
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017

### Jazz/Jazz Studies
New England Conservatory of Music
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/palgorhythm

---
Source: https://flows.cv/jacobrichards
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/jacobrichards/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22