Allison Thackston is a Senior Manager in robotics with 11 years of hands-on experience building and scaling engineering teams that turn research-grade autonomy into reliable products. She has led high-impact planning and behavior teams at Waymo and Nuro and now drives robotics delivery at Blue River Technology, consistently aligning cross-functional engineering, product, and safety stakeholders. Known for coaching technical leaders, she organizes working groups to tackle hard on-road interactions and vulnerable road-user behavior, blending deep systems engineering with practical safety rigor. A founding member of the ROS2 Technical Steering Committee and longtime contributor to robotics labs and NASA-contracted projects, she brings both academic chops in robotics and real-world system integration experience. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Allison enjoys mentoring engineers and creating sustainable architectures that make complex robots dependable in the wild.
11 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bachelor of Science - BS Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology
M.S. Mechanical Engineering - Robotics, M.S. Mechanical Engineering - Robotics at University of Hawaii at Manoa
Contributions:9 reviews, 88 commits, 58 PRs in 1 year 11 months
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Allison Thackston - Senior Manager Robotics at Blue River Technology