Alex Gonzalez
Senior Linux Software Engineer - OS Lead at balena
Greater Logroño Metropolitan Area Spain
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlex Gonzalez is a Senior Linux Software Engineer and OS lead with over two decades of experience in embedded operating systems, real-time multimedia, and Yocto-based Linux distributions, currently driving balenaOS platform quality and build infrastructure. He combines hands-on kernel and BSP development for ARM System-on-Modules with team leadership and product ownership experience from leading cross-functional, multi-timezone engineering teams at Digi International. Alex has deep expertise in bootloaders, NAND/kernel adaptations, wireless subsystems and multimedia stacks (ALSA, gstreamer, V4L2), and has materially contributed to well-known Yocto BSP layers such as meta-freescale and meta-balena. Beyond coding, he has hired and mentored engineers, presented at international conferences, and written technical articles—bringing both technical depth and strong communication to embedded IoT products. An unusual strength is his blend of low-level kernel modifications for specific hardware (e.g., Digi ConnectCore) with improvements to CI/build systems like zram swap and initramfs enhancements, bridging device bring-up and fleet-grade OS maintenance.
13 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
MSc, Communication Systems, MSc, Communication Systems at University of PortsmouthIngeniero Técnico Industrial, Electrónica Industrial, Ingeniero Técnico Industrial, Electrónica Industrial at Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
English, Spanish
Github Skills (21)
linux-kernel10
yocto10
flash10
device-tree10
u-boot10
sys10
embedded10
systemd10
flash-memory10
devops10
docker8
automated-tests8
wifi8
c178
bluetooth8
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
balena-os/meta-balena
Sep 2019 - Jan 2023
A collection of Yocto layers used to build balenaOS images
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:720 reviews, 785 commits, 495 PRs in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Alex's primary contributions focused on maintaining and improving the build process and infrastructure for balenaOS. This included reworking patches, such as those for the network manager, to remove build warnings and address fuzzing issues. They also implemented the addition of support for compressed memory swap using ZRAM. Furthermore, the user was responsible for various enhancements, including generating udev links for partitions and adding new initramfs modules.
meta-resinbalenaresinbalenaosdocker
Freescale/meta-freescale-3rdparty
Nov 2018 - Jul 2019
OpenEmbedded/Yocto BSP layer for Freescale's ARM based platforms
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:17 commits, 4 PRs, 11 comments in 7 months
Contributions summary:Alex contributed significantly to the Freescale OpenEmbedded/Yocto BSP layer, primarily focused on supporting Digi International's ConnectCore 6UL System-on-Module (SOM) and associated boards. Their work involved adding and adapting U-Boot bootloader configurations for Digi platforms, integrating support for the ConnectCore 6UL SOM within the Linux kernel, and modifying the kernel to work with the specific NAND flash memory layout used by Digi. Furthermore, the user developed udev rules for Digi SOMs, including the integration of a QCA6564 WiFi/Bluetooth module and adapted the code base for newer kernel versions.
platformsyocto-bspfreescaleyocto-layerunicorn
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