# Samuel Sommerer

> SWE @ Skydio

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/samuelsommerer

I'm a full-time SWE at Skydio.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Skydio
Jan 2024 – Present

### Software Engineer @ Palantir Technologies
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024
- Design and build low-latency secure websocket notifications for defense geospatial use cases
- Enforce data synchronization and visibility across multiple customer and staging stacks
- Maintain and support Elasticsearch, Apache Flink, and Kafka workflows affecting business-critical customers

### Software Engineering Intern - Core Services @ Rivian
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Palo Alto, California, United States
- Designed and built geolocation and scheduling microservices REST APIs using Python
- Deployed widely consumed endpoints using AWS Lambda and API Gateway
- Leveraged DynamoDB and Elasticsearch to enable fast and scalable querying

### Software Engineering Consultant @ Valence Vibrations
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022
- Processed audio data for emotion classification machine learning tasks
- Supported ML model deployment on haptic-communication devices targeting neurodiverse audiences

### CURVE Machine Learning Research Fellow at the INK Lab @ USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Los Angeles, California, United States
- Utilize the BART transformer and natural language processing to generate instructions for robotic agents
- Develop novel scoring metrics for natural language processing models and tasks

### VP of Projects @ USC Center for AI in Society's Student Branch (CAIS++)
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022

### Project Co-Lead (Ocean Pollution) @ USC Center for AI in Society's Student Branch (CAIS++)
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022

### Project Co-Lead (Viral Genomics) @ USC Center for AI in Society's Student Branch (CAIS++)
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021
I co-lead a team of USC students on a project investigating the intersection of machine learning and genomics. Using GANs, LSTMs, and other methods, we generate novel viral genome sequences and predict their pandemic potential, trying to keep ahead of the next global outbreak.

### Project Member @ USC Center for AI in Society's Student Branch (CAIS++)
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020
As part of this student group, I collaborate with other AI/ML talent at USC to tackle a new social problem every semester. This past semester, I worked on a team that aimed to debias automated reviews of resumes. I conducted principle component analysis and calculated relational inner product association of word embeddings to determine gender bias.

### Club Lead @ DSC @ USC
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022

### Technical Lead @ DSC @ USC
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021
I am a technical lead in this student group specializing in machine learning. I create and lead workshops teaching machine learning to club members. Topics have included Python basics, Numpy, pandas, and more.

### Machine Learning Intern - Autonomous Vehicles @ MITRE
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021
I worked with and optimized Faster RCNN, YOLOv3, and PIXOR object detectors in the context of autonomous vehicles. To evaluate autonomous vehicle protection mechanisms, I created attacks against these object detectors. Through my work during this internship, I contributed to novel research and am a coauthor on a paper to be presented at DAPSPAC 2022. I was also on the 1st place team in a company-wide intern data science competition.

### Machine Learning Researcher at the ICAROS Lab @ USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Los Angeles, California, United States
I'm part of a team implementing novel machine learning algorithms to improve human-robot interaction. One of my contributions include increasing algorithm speed by three times using the Numba library. I've also created tutorials to showcase key features of the novel machine learning library that we are developing.

### Editor @ USC Illumin Magazine
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021
As part of a team of editors, I help review and recommend over a hundred student submissions for publication in our magazine while providing editorial feedback. I also expand the magazine’s visibility and increase readership by promoting to student groups.

### Population Genomics Researcher @ Chiang Lab
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Los Angeles, California, United States
I authored Python and Slurm scripts to process millions of data points to calculate polygenic risk scores. I integrated these scripts with High-Performance Computing clusters, reducing the scripts' runtimes by more than 50%. To help the rest of the lab understand my work, I analyzed and presented a relevant published journal article to the research group of 20+ people.


## Education
### Master of Science - MS in Computer Science
University of Southern California

### Bachelor of Science - BS in Computer Science
University of Southern California

### GPA: 4.6 W
Bellarmine College Preparatory


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/samuel-sommerer
- Portfolio: https://sam-sommerer.github.io/

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Source: https://flows.cv/samuelsommerer
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/samuelsommerer/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-29