Experience
2025 — Now
2021 — 2024
2021 — 2024
South San Francisco, California, United States
Built and led a robotics team responsible for the autonomous taxiing and cargo manipulation capabilities of a novel autonomous aerial+ground cargo drone, encompassing software, sensors, actuators, mechanisms, compute components, electrical systems, and ground support systems.
• Recruited, onboarded, and managed a team of 6 software, mechanical, and robotics engineers
• Implemented and led team rituals and established strong ways of working, e.g. OKRs, design reviews, quarterly reviews, hackathons, and collaborative goal setting sessions
• Led the design, build, and field testing of several autonomous full scale ground demonstrator vehicles, resulting in successful demonstrations for industry groups, key investors, and senior DOD leadership
• Designed and implemented avionics and comms system for ⅓-scale Part 107 compliant aircraft, encompassing sensors, flight computers, RF systems, networking, comms buses, and flight logging
2020 — 2021
2020 — 2021
San Francisco, California, United States
Led the development of a ROS2-based robotics software stack enabling autonomous ground taxi and cargo pick-up operations for a large cargo-carrying drone.
• Authored C++ and Python robotics software modules for sensing, path planning, state estimation, control, cargo pod docking and manipulation, sensor and actuator interfaces, and high level vehicle behaviors
• Developed high-fidelity Gazebo simulation environment including virtualized communications busses, device emulators, and simulated cargo manipulation
• Led several test campaigns with full scale prototype vehicle, successfully demonstrating outdoor navigation, cargo pod tracking (Lidar/UWB) and manipulation, collision avoidance, and high level vehicle behaviors
• Established tools and processes for best software development practices, including diverse compilers, static analysis, build automation, CI, and peer review
2019 — 2020
San Francisco Bay Area
• Developed safety critical avionics software in C++ culminating in a successful full-scale flight test campaign
• Sole author of mission critical CAN and serial bus drivers for propulsion motor controllers, scanning Lidars, radar altimeter, high-voltage batteries, flight termination system, and air data modules
• Developed SIL/HIL simulation environments, including creating realistic emulators for the above devices
• Established C++/CMake cross-compile build system, unit test framework, and deployment infrastructure for vehicle’s network of 10 ARM Linux flight computers networked via CAN bus and Ethernet
• Served as flight test engineer during first full-scale flight test campaign, including development of processes and checklists as well as hands-on vehicle integration support
2017 — 2019
2017 — 2019
San Francisco Bay Area
Developed core robotics software and firmware for Cozmo and Vector product lines, which shipped to hundreds of thousands of users worldwide.
• Wrote and maintained software modules encompassing sensing, control, localization, mapping, simulation, robot behavior, docking, manipulation, IMU bias correction, freefall detection, and table edge detection
• Authored several user-facing high-level robot behaviors such as detecting/dancing to music, autonomously returning to the charging dock, interactive user games, and reactions to user behavior
• Maintained robot simulation framework including automated simulation CI/regression tests
• Initiated several R&D projects that grew into full fledged features and shipped in major releases
Education
Drexel University
Master of Science (MS)
McGill University