Luis E. Linares

Embedded Systems Engineer. Physicist. Problem solver.

Short Biography

I received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electronics Engineering and a B.Sc. degree in Physics from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, between 2008 and 2012. Since then I've progressed from research engineering and computing operations into senior backend and cloud roles, co-founding and leading an imaging startup, and ultimately managing and senior engineering positions in embedded systems and edge computing.

Research Interests

Education

Universidad de los Andes —  January 2003-September 2012
M.S. in Electronics and Computer Engineering September 2012
B.S. in Electronics Engineering September 2009
B.S. in Physics September 2008

Employment

Midokura Ibérica S.L. Barcelona, Spain
Senior Embedded Systems Engineer November 2023-February 2025
  • Wrote technical design documents and implemented features for the backend of the Local Console desktop application. The backend is written in Python, using the FastAPI server and the Trio async framework.
  • Developed a proprietary low-cost AIoT camera prototype to play along with Local Console. Firmware was built on top of Yocto.
Tech Lead Manager, Embedded Systems team June 2020-October 2023
  • Grew the team from two engineers in 2020 to eight in 2022, with six currently on duty.
  • Implemented documentation processes for improving communication in the face of challenging language barriers (Japanese/English/Spanish).
  • Wrote RFCs and technical design documents for guiding the team's engineering process and product delivery.
  • Worked with the team on our technology stack, written in C99 & C11, and targeting the POSIX-compliant NuttX RTOS, integrating WebAssembly via the Bytecode Alliance's WebAssembly Micro Runtime.
  • Designed and built our test stack of unit, integration and end-to-end tests, leveraging CMocka, GitHub Actions and shell and Python scripting.
UBIMET GmbH Vienna, Austria
Senior Software Engineer October 2018-June 2020
  • Transformed weather forecasting algorithms written in MATLAB, into optimized C++ code that runs on datacenters in several regions.
  • Debugged problems related to lightning sensor networks deployed worldwide, related to sensors' telemetry acquisition, data processing and ETL.
  • Collaborated with IT teams to ensure seamless updates to the company's computational pipeline.
  • Analyzed core dumps and other tracing information when software bugs crashed the forecasting processes running on the datacenters.
Huge Inc. Bogotá, Colombia
Backend Engineer February 2018-September 2018
  • Collaborate with remote teams in developing and testing features of Django-based services.
  • Perform zero-downtime deployments of application updates running on Google's GCP.
  • Assist in the automation efforts of the QA team.
Meridian Group. Bogotá, Colombia
Backend Engineer April 2017-January 2018
  • Design and implementation of cloud-based big data processing architectures, based on Apache Spark.
  • Development and support for web-based service platforms written in Python, Node.js, Java and Scala.
  • Deployment, commissioning and support of servers for IoT technologies such as MQTT.
EOST, an automated microscopy company Bogotá, Colombia
Co-founder and CTO February 2015-March 2017
  • Designed the architecture of the image acquisition and processing pipeline associated to a specialized CCD camera for automated microscopy.
  • Designed the product's motion control and image processing stack: C++11, OpenCV, Python, ARM's mbed framework.
  • Product overview: OneGeo platform primer. Sold to parent company GMAS Lab.
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Geneva, Switzerland
Computing Operations Engineer November 2012-December 2014
  • Maintained several Grid infrastructure subservices for the CMS Collaboration.
  • Developed server scripts and web applications for infrastructure monitoring.
  • Provided operational and integration support to institutions participating in the Collaboration.
GMAS Lab, a Geological services company Bogotá, Colombia
Research Engineer July 2011-October 2012
  • Performed PCB Design, SBOM procurement and assembly of sensing and data acquisition hardware for an optical microscope that measured the reflectance of a class of minerals.
  • Designed and installed ancillary infrastructure for the hardware.
  • Wrote implementation, tests and documentation for an end-user GUI application to operate the microscope.

Publications

J. Adelman, L. Linares et al.
Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Volume 513, Issue 3, 2014
P. Kreuzer, L. Linares et al.
Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Volume 513, Issue 6, 2014
Luis Linares
Masters Thesis in Electronics and Computers Engineering, 2012
Luis E. Linares García and Alba G. Avila Bernal
Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2011
Luis Linares
Bachelor Thesis in Electronics Engineering, 2009

Skills

Embedded systems design. ⦁ Edge computing and AIoT ⦁ Cloud-native distributed systems ⦁ Agile project management ⦁ C, C++, Rust, Python, WebAssembly ⦁ CI&CD on GitLab and GitHub, including Hardware-in-the-loop validation. ⦁ Containerization, process isolation and sandboxing (Docker, Podman, WASM) ⦁ Engineer mentoring

Other Activities

NASA International Space Apps Challenge (Vienna, Austria) 2019
Co-creator (backend and data engineering) 2019
My team built Wakaya, a mobile game for children which leads the players through the journey of an animal during its seasonal migration. We drew from NASA's environmental datasets, for composing the journey various animal species, and created an AR experience to raise awareness on the impact of Climate Change on animal life, and inspire consumption habit changes.
NASA Lunabotics Competition 2011, 2012
Founding member, Electronics leader 2011
Advisory member on Electronics design and integration 2012 Being a founding member of the RoboCol team from my Alma Mater, we designed and built a remotely operated excavator rover, under budget, weight and environmental constraints (such as the need to tolerate the moon's volatile and abrasive regolith).