Bio

I have worked for KBR since 2017. Current title: principal software engineer. I support projects at NASA Ames Research Center, including flight software for the VIPER lunar rover and Deep Space Autonomy. Software architecture for Earth Independent Operations. I also lead software development for an air traffic safety research project.

Mostly C++, Rust, and Python. I consider flight software my primary specialty, mostly because it's the work I enjoy most, but I consider software engineering a general profession. I write code in whatever form the problem requires. I expect to handle unfamiliar tasks and languages with little ramp-up.

Getting here took longer to figure out. Straight out of high school, I served as a U.S. Army combat medic from 2006 to 2010. The following fall, I enrolled at Irvine Valley College and too many years later I transferred to the University of California, Irvine. My first NASA internship was at Armstrong Flight Research Center during the summer of 2014. (Renamed from Dryden just a few months before, even though Neil died two years earlier; typical government efficiency.) By spring quarter in 2015 I was back for another, this time at Ames Research Center, and I have worked on projects there in one capacity or another ever since. School, however, still required my attention.

I finished most of a Computer Science and Engineering degree before arriving at the prospect of taking Digital Signal Processing for a third time. Whatever else my education accomplished, it had equipped me to count to three and recognize that I wanted no part of it. I switched to pure CS and finished my B.S. in Computer Science in 2018. My mother is perpetually annoyed by my refusal to pursue a graduate degree. I continue to resist.

Photography started with black-and-white film in high school. I returned to it during the 2015 Ames internship and bought the Nikon D610 I still use shortly afterwards. After years of shooting digital only, I've come around to shooting the occasional roll of film again so that I can relive the exhilaration of missing the shot because I'm loading film or just missing the shot and not knowing until days later.

General Class amateur radio license in 2021. I didn't have a lot else to do and I already knew half of the test questions from school. Upgraded to Amateur Extra in 2026. My callsign names this website, and that remains the full extent of my use of the license.

Email jason@ak6te.com