# Ronald Joseph Desmarais, Ph.D. > Staff Software Engineer @ Walmart Labs | Software Development, Computational Geometry Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/ronaldjosephdesmaraisphd At Walmart Labs, I contribute over six years of experience in software development and design, focusing on creating robust, efficient systems. My expertise spans software architecture, computational geometry, and cloud-based solutions, enabling collaborative and innovative problem-solving within the organization. Dedicated to leveraging advanced software engineering principles, I aim to model complex systems and optimize resource provisioning. My work aligns with Walmart Labs’ mission to deliver scalable, context-driven solutions that drive impactful technological advancements. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Walmart Labs Jan 2019 – Present | Sunnyvale, California ### Senior Software Engineer @ Walmart Labs Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Sunnyvale, California ### Software Engineer @ Xperiel Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Sunnyvale, California ### Research Associate / Postdoc @ High Energy Physics Computing Group Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | University of Victoria I’ve been employed full time as a cloud systems research associate in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Victoria. In this work, we analyze and adapt to changes in cloud infrastructure and load to ensure seamless processing of scientific applications as part of the CERN cloud computing site in Europe. I Develop code for Image distribution using Openstack, Amazon's EC2 and Google's GCE. I also research cost effective methods of utilizing EC2 spot pricing to minimize computational costs of running physics jobs. ### Researcher / Data Visualization @ Terapeak Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | University of Victoria I work as a post doc for my past PhD advisor (Dr. Hausi Muller PhD, PEng) to analyze and visualize “Big Data”. In this project we are fortunate to work with TeraPeak which has exclusive rights to analyze eBay data, thereby giving their customers an edge to buy and sell products. My personal involvement with this project includes analysis (to give semantics to the data) and visualization (semantic representation). ### Software Engineer/Architect @ Adaptive Optics Lab Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | University of Victoria I worked full time as a software developer and architect in the Adaptive Optics Lab at the department of mechanical engineering (Dr. Colin Bradley P.Eng.). In this group project called RAVEN, we designed and built an adaptive optics bench that could adapt to atmospherics and correct distorted light from far away galaxies and stars making it possible to capture images from space more clear than Hubble. In this project I designed and built software components for the robotic bench systems, and for the image processing pipeline. Development included Matlab for the bench hardware, Java for the Mercury controllers, LabView for OpenNI hardware, and python/C/C++ for image processing. ### Teaching Assistant - Mechatronics @ University of Victoria Jan 2007 – Jan 2011 | University of Victoria During my time as a graduate student I worked approximately one year as a Teaching Assistant in Mechatronics for 4th year Engineers (2007-2011). This work was primarily embedded systems development in C/C++ integrated with electrical systems such as Power MosFETs and H-Bridge motor controllers to design and build autonomous vehicles. I personally constructed and taught control theory to manage blimps and hovercraft. I also designed several path finding data structures and algorithms for autonomous vehicles to drive themselves in patrol patterns (Computational Geometry is my favourite subject). ### IBM Center for Advanced Studies @ IBM Center for Advanced Studies Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 | Markham, Ontario I started an IBM CAS fellowship to fund graduate school. I worked at the IBM Software Lab in Markham Ontario on developing a web services evolution tool to be used with IBMs WebSphere services application framework. From 2007 to 2008 I gained invaluable experience developing production quality software. This included working in a small distributed team of software engineers at IBM (Dr. Marin Litoiu PhD, PEng) and Google (Piotr Kaminski MSc). This work heavily entailed reverse engineering as many of the software modules we were extending was undocumented. ### Project Manager @ CANARIE Inc. Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 | University of Victoria I managed a small team of software developers to create a web services Grid to execute application workloads. This included creating requirements document artifacts such as use case diagrams and others to capture the client’s objectives so they could be created in software. In addition to requirements gathering, software design and implementation was also a focus. Documentation included class diagrams, sequence diagrams, deployment diagrams, state diagrams and others were created to map user and system requirements to software elements that can be realized in a software language. ## Education ### Ph.D. in Scheduling and Control Theory Applied to Cloud Computing University of Victoria ### Bachelor's Degree in Software University of Victoria ### St. Boniface Diocesan ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ronald-joseph-desmarais-ph-d-402251b --- Source: https://flows.cv/ronaldjosephdesmaraisphd JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/ronaldjosephdesmaraisphd/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12