about me

Aiden Hale

Hello, I'm Aiden! I'm a software engineer with a focus on backend, tooling and infrastructure.

I started my career in the web/app development back in 2009 and soon transitioned to embedded C++. I learned a lot about working within limited ecosystems and how to work around the limitations via tooling. I got to apply these things in a number of architecture-type gigs for major players in the automotive industry. Eventually I got to create a greenfield build- and release-infrastructure project for the next-gen toolchain for a major automotive manufacturer.

I am deeply passionate about improving the development process and experience. My focus is on developing internal tools, streamlining processes through automation, fostering a supportive developer ecosystem, and sharing knowledge through mentoring.

My goal for 2024 is to contribute to the broader developer community through open-source contributions and streaming.

impact

2021-2023

Key stakeholder and architect for the Build & Packaging team for a next-gen greenfield project of Major Automotive OEM:

  • Collaborated with 3 downstream customer teams.
  • Co-designed release and migration processes.
  • Designed and developed custom plug and play release artifact generation tooling.

Achieved efficiency improvements by:

  • Championing and promoting Infrastructure as Code.
  • Automating vendor tooling deployment to Docker images.
  • Automating release engineer activities (branching, tagging, etc).
  • Implementing early integration pipelines to detect newly introduced issues.
  • Automating syntax backporting for zero-overhead delivery support for older toolchain versions.

Reduced vendor tooling integration from 2 days to just over 4 hours.

Developed internal tools to support development workflows for ~200 engineers for a range of toolchains and target systems.

Secured dedicated bandwidth for the team to enhance workflows and infrastructure, beyond immediate request fulfillment.

2015-2021

Major contributor to a proprietary Human-Machine Interface (HMI) framework:

  • Deployed code to over 500k cars worldwide.
  • Rolled out features to over 200k cars, primarily in the JAPAC region.

Enhanced rendering pipeline performance, enabling new features for low-performing targets.

Optimized computation-heavy operations in the end-user project build pipeline, reducing build times for complex projects from several minutes to under a minute.

highlights

2023

  • Fully automated Internal Developer Platform, reducing Docker image generation time from 2 hours to 45 minutes.
  • Designed global infrastructure recovery mechanism, enabling CI and release restoration in 6 hours.
  • Integrated 2 Yocto-based toolchains for new customer team.

2022

  • Co-designed project-wide toolchain migration process for 5 embedded targets, 100+ repositories, and migration CI infrastructure.
  • Developed release delivery and integration mechanism for 3 downstream customers.
  • Extended Yocto-based integration model for a wider range of Yocto releases.
  • Integrated an additional Yocto-based toolchain.

2021

  • Deployed common CI pipeline for C++, TypeScript, and Python components.
  • Implemented basic automation for Internal Developer Platform generation.
  • Established Yocto-based integration model for project components.

2020

  • Conducted infotainment stack gap analysis.
  • Co-designed architecture for speech recognition subsystem.
  • Conducted market research in the automotive embedded setting.
  • Integrated Unreal Engine 4 with proprietary HMI framework.

2019

  • Optimized rendering pipeline for low-performance embedded targets.
  • Extended customer-facing Lua API with 3D rendering.
  • Developed reference driver assist rendering logic via Lua.

2018

  • Implemented different shading models for 3D rendering.
  • Extended GStreamer-based video rendering capabilities.
  • Implemented SVG 1.1 feature-compatible rendering pipeline.
  • Developed vector asset processing plugin.

2017

  • Implemented C++11 thread library features in a C++03-compatible SDK.
  • Implemented dithering algorithms for bitmap asset compression.
  • Extended shared memory capabilities of the proprietary HMI framework.

2016

  • Optimized rendering pipeline for OpenVG rendering.
  • Implemented graphics features for OpenGL rendering.
  • Debugged and fixed major stack smashing issue in a rendering pipeline.
  • Rewrote bitmap processing and compression plugin.
  • Created internal tools for crash analysis and replay capabilities.

2015

  • Developed Conditional Access System backend component.
  • Developed high-load C++ backend application with RESTful API.
  • Developed Python-based test modules for automated testing.