Alex Williams
Senior Software Engineer at Google
San Francisco Bay Area United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlex Williams is a Senior Software Engineer based in the San Francisco Bay Area with nine years of experience building embedded systems, device drivers, and FPGA-based hardware integrations. He has progressed through technical roles at National Instruments, BeeCube, and Google, and most recently contributed to open-source silicon security via the high-profile OpenTitan project. Alex combines low-level systems expertise—writing DIF libraries and drivers and shaping FPGA/Verilator models—with networking and heterogeneous computing interests, including adding DPDK-based transport and low-level radio APIs in UHD. He is comfortable bridging firmware, hardware, and system software domains, improving board-level timing, register maps, and peripheral integrations. Known for pragmatic problem solving, he often surfaces cross-domain optimizations that reduce integration friction between silicon, firmware, and host stacks.
9 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, BerkeleyMaster of Science - MS Computer Engineering, Master of Science - MS Computer Engineering at San José State University
Github Skills (25)
hardware-designs10
verilog10
embedded-software10
c-language10
systemverilog10
dma10
cpd10
usb10
sys10
fpga10
dpdk10
embedded10
vivado10
cprogramming-language10
udp9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
lowRISC/opentitan
Jul 2020 - Jan 2023
OpenTitan: Open source silicon root of trust
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer
Embedded Systems EngineerContributions:1866 reviews, 138 commits, 437 PRs in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Alexander Williams contributed significantly to the OpenTitan project, focusing on hardware and system-level integration. His work included adding and configuring various hardware components, notably related to USB functionality, such as the addition of new pins and the integration of a TUSB1106 PHY. Furthermore, Williams was involved in writing drivers for new peripheral functionality, developing DIF (Device Interface Functions) libraries for flash control and other core hardware modules. He also made contributions to the FPGA and Verilator models.
root-of-trustrootsilicontrust
EttusResearch/fpga
May 2017 - Dec 2019
The USRP™ Hardware Driver FPGA Repository
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:59 commits in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Alex primarily focuses on FPGA development within the USRP™ Hardware Driver FPGA Repository. Their contributions involve implementing support for generating block diagrams from Vivado-exported Tcl scripts, integrating AXI4-Lite register files, and adding DMA controller and conversion components between different data stream interfaces, all crucial for hardware-level functionality. The user demonstrates a strong understanding of hardware design, IP integration, and the use of Xilinx tools. They made improvements related to timing constraints and component integration for the N320 board specifically.
xilinxlatticeusrphardwarefpga
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