Bob Foerster is a Chief Software Architect with over 15 years of experience designing and delivering complex systems from embedded devices to IoT cloud platforms that coordinate thousands of endpoints. He blends hands-on engineering with technical leadership at SecuraStock and as Head Software Engineer at Sunless, Inc., driving architecture, performance tuning, and reliable production delivery. His background in electrical and computer engineering (Youngstown State University and Ohio State) informs a systems-first approach that bridges firmware, back-end services, and operational concerns. An active contributor to the bitbake build system, he has improved performance and robustness in a core open-source tool used across embedded Linux ecosystems. Based in Canfield, Ohio, he pairs practical optimizations—like low-level refactors and signal-handling fixes—with UI and developer-experience improvements that reduce build pain and accelerate teams. Colleagues rely on him to tame complexity and translate device-scale requirements into maintainable, scalable software architectures.
15 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
BE, Electrical/Computer Engineering, BE, Electrical/Computer Engineering at Youngstown State University
Master's of Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, Master's of Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University
The official bitbake Git is at https://git.openembedded.org/bitbake/. Do not open issues or file pull requests here.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:6 commits in 1 month
Contributions summary:Bob primarily contributed to the `bitbake` build system, optimizing and improving the code's performance. They focused on refactoring code to use `xrange` instead of `range` for efficiency and also updated the code to handle server interrupt signals correctly. The user implemented UI enhancements, specifically related to the alternative UI, as well as fixing various issues. These changes include updates to parsing events and handling build progress.
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.
Request Free Trial
Bob Foerster - Chief Software Architect at Sunless, Inc.