# Liam Benson

> Founding Engineer at Agave

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/liambenson

Software Engineer with experience growing teams and leading projects with high impact across an organization. Strong first principles approach to problem solving using knowledge of a broad array of data technologies including Airflow, Spark, AWS, RabbitMQ, MySQL, Kafka and Redis.

## Work Experience
### Founding Engineer @ Agave
Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States

### Data Infrastructure Engineering Manager @ Embark Trucks
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023
• Grew a team from 1 to 6 engineers focused on building a data platform that enables stakeholders across Embark to gain access and insights into self-driving data to empower the development of the company's self-driving technology
• Worked with product team representatives and stakeholders across the engineering organization while balancing tech debt and team member goals to develop a strategy and plan that aligned to overall company OKRs
• Led team on pushes for ease of use of the data platform: abstractions around our internal databases with APIs, abstractions of our Airflow and Spark processing platform to empower ML and Data Science workflows, and faster data access formats
• Led design and co-implemented a novel data offloading system to support the company’s roll out of a commercializable product which enabled the selective offloading of vital data from the truck live during operation (Patents Pending)

### Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure @ Embark Trucks
Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California, United States
• Redesigned and developed the data importing system used to offload terabytes of data into the cloud from trucks each day using Python, MySQL, and Amazon S3
• Redesigned and developed a data recording tool for the truck capable of handling 300 MBps of data using C++ and ROS
• Designed and developed a distributed data playback mechanism that enables engineers to test hours of self-driving data within minutes using ROS, Python, Docker, Kubernetes (Amazon EKS), RabbitMQ, and Amazon S3. Patent pending
• Designed and developed a low-latency video streaming for trucks in low LTE conditions using ROS, C++, GStreamer, Redis, and Python
• Assisted in the design and development of low-latency streaming of arbitrary data from autonomous vehicles in low LTE conditions using ROS, Python, and Redis (Patent Pending)
• Productionalized a teleoperation system for an autonomous trucks used as the book-end for Embark’s demos during its SPAC process using ROS, C++, Python, and GStreamer
• Redesigned and built our data access utilities to improve the speed by 10x using C++ (https://github.com/embarktrucks/embag)
• Built out a chunked uploading system to empower offloading data live from trucks to Azure Blob service in a reliable manner while operating in extremely unreliable network conditions using Python and Redis
• Built out a data request system that enabled users to select data points to be offloaded from the truck using the aforementioned uploading system. Used React, Python, and MySQL.
• Developed a simulation tool to determine if lack of human intervention would have resulted in a collision using C++ and ROS. Findings were published as part of Embark’s public 2018 Disengagement Report (https://medium.com/embark-trucks/embark-releases-our-2018-disengagement-report-2f242992141b)

### FPGA Engineer @ Intel Corporation
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Developed embedded software (C) and machine code used within memory interfaces on FPGAs, as well as Python, Perl, and TCL scripts for testing

### Full Stack Engineer @ Pivot
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Redwood City, California, United States
• Designed and developed a coupon like system for user registration and management
using Node.js, Postgres, AWS Cognito, Amazon EC2, Docker, and Auth0
• Designed and Developed a statically hosted website to interact with the backend system
using React + Redux, Amazon S3, and Auth0
• Created various ETLs for a data warehouse using Node.js, Postgres, and RabbitMQ

### Software Engineer @ Oracle
Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Developed and maintained data import and export software using C# and SQL

### Software Engineer @ Hubdoc
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Developed web scrapers for financial documents using Node.js and PhantomJS

### Software Engineer @ CIBC
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Developed internal portal for launching various applications using Javascript, JQuery, and C#


## Education
### Bachelor of Applied Science - BASc in Dean’s Honors List, Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/liam-benson-2b2936268

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Source: https://flows.cv/liambenson
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/liambenson/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-10