Brendan Mcdonnell
Embedded Systems Engineer And President at Modular Embedded Engineering, LLC
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBrendan Mcdonnell is an embedded systems engineer and founder with eight years of professional embedded and firmware experience and a longer history of hands-on hardware-software integration. He builds modular, reusable "close-to-the-metal" firmware for multi-PCB systems, industrial sensors, and IoT platforms, and has led contract engineering through his company, Modular Embedded Engineering. Brendan contributes to notable open-source embedded projects such as Arm Mbed OS and the widely used single-file audio libraries (dr_libs), improving low-level drivers and build/CI workflows. His work emphasizes developer ergonomics—introducing build-profile organization and avoiding unnecessary flash/seek operations to accelerate development cycles. Past roles include principal and senior engineering positions across rail, NMR well-logging, and industrial control domains, reflecting a strong aptitude for system-level problem solving. He holds advanced study in computer engineering from Drexel and combines software best practices with practical hardware insights.
8 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
MSCpE, Computer Engineering, MSCpE, Computer Engineering at Drexel UniversityBSEE, Electrical Engineering, BSEE, Electrical Engineering at Cedarville University
Github Skills (24)
deco10
c-language10
python10
build-system10
wav10
decode10
device-driver10
sys10
fileio10
file-processing10
file-handling10
embedded10
file-access10
cprogramming-language10
decoder10
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
ARMmbed/mbed-os
Dec 2017 - Jul 2018
Arm Mbed OS is a platform operating system designed for the internet of things
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:29 commits, 12 PRs, 205 comments in 7 months
Contributions summary:Brendan primarily contributed to the `mbed-os` project by addressing compiler warnings and correcting typos within the code base. Their work involved modifying low-level system files and drivers, including ethernet and peripheral device drivers. Additionally, the user made improvements to the InterruptIn functionality by adding a constructor to control the pin mode. These changes suggest a focus on system-level programming and hardware interaction.
kernelmbed-osoperating-systemlinuxmbed
mackron/dr_libs
Jun 2018 - Jul 2019
Audio decoding libraries for C/C++, each in a single source file.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:9 commits, 4 PRs, 30 comments in 1 year
Contributions summary:Brendan primarily contributed to the `dr_wav` library, focusing on enhancements to WAV file writing capabilities. Their work included adding the option to specify WAV file size during initialization, to avoid seeking later on. The commits also involved fixing typos and refactoring helper functions for chunk size calculations. They also introduced a utility function to determine the target size of written data.
cppdecodingaudio-filemp3wav
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