Antal Spector-zabusky
Senior Compiler Engineer at Rigetti Computing
New York, New York, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAntal Spector‑Zabusky is a Senior Compiler Engineer and programming-language researcher with 12 years of experience blending deep theory and production compiler work. He holds a PhD in programming languages and formal verification and has applied that background at Jane Street by extending OCaml’s type system, improving error reporting, and maintaining compatibility across large codebases, and now builds compilers for quantum processors at Rigetti. A longtime Haskell programmer, he led the hs-to-coq translation in his PhD and contributes to key OCaml projects like the ocaml compiler and Merlin, where his changes improved type-checking robustness and editor integrations. He’s passionate about elegant code and clear explanations, and is unusually comfortable moving between formal proofs, practical tooling, and large-scale code refactors.
11 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts - BA Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts - BA Computer Science at Williams CollegeMathematics, Mathematics at Budapest Semester in MathematicsDoctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science at University of Pennsylvania
English, French
Stackoverflow
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Github Skills (43)
debug10
applescript10
math10
ocaml10
type-system10
compiler-design10
compiler-compiler10
compiler10
error-handling10
functional-programming10
backend10
guid10
haskell10
boolean-logic9
programming-language9
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
ocaml/ocaml
Jan 2021 - Jun 2022
The core OCaml system: compilers, runtime system, base libraries
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:49 reviews, 26 commits, 2 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Antal primarily focused on improving the OCaml system's type-checking capabilities. Their work involved fixing bugs in type expansion, documenting invariants, and refactoring the types used for type-checking errors. They significantly enhanced error messages by maintaining more structural information, which enabled more informative error reports. This contribution included significant modifications to `typing/ctype.ml` and related files, demonstrating a deep understanding of the compiler's type system.
functional-languagecompilersruntime-systemapllwt
ocaml/merlin
Jun 2021 - Nov 2022
Context sensitive completion for OCaml in Vim and Emacs
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 7 commits, 5 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Antal's contributions primarily focused on bug fixes and improvements to the OCaml Merlin codebase. They addressed issues related to error handling, particularly dealing with `Persistent_env.Error`. They also implemented code formatting changes and addressed a race condition related to process management. Furthermore, they modified the codebase to improve logging capabilities, specifically the handling of exceptions, and made adjustments to the Emacs integration.
vimocamlemacssensitiveatom
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