Chad Baker
Lead Simulation Software Developer
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolChad Baker is a Lead Simulation Software Developer with 15 years of experience building multi-physics and techno-economic simulation tools for decarbonizing transportation and geothermal energy systems. He combines a mechanical engineering PhD in thermal-fluids with production software leadership, having led open-source vehicle and locomotive powertrain models (conventional, HEV, PHEV, BEV) and vehicle thermal system simulations at NREL and Ford. Known for driving performance gains, he has recently steered ports of Python packages to Rust to achieve orders-of-magnitude speedups. His work spans system-level modeling, experimental validation, and pragmatic software practices—he even fixed a SciPy optimization bug during his PhD—so he sits comfortably at the intersection of applied research and high-performance engineering. Based in Zurich, he excels at translating complex physical models into scalable, team-oriented software that informs long-term technology rollout decisions.
15 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
PhD Mechanical Engineering - Thermal Fluids Sciences, PhD Mechanical Engineering - Thermal Fluids Sciences at The University of Texas at AustinBS Mechanical Engineering, BS Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University
English, German
Stackoverflow
1,500reputation
1.3mreached
21answers
37questions
Github Skills (102)
measurement10
ffi10
binding10
vpn-client9
editor9
thunderbird9
rust9
numba9
sympy9
parallel9
python9
pythonista9
units-of-measurement9
console9
electron9
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
NREL/altrios
Jul 2023 - Mar 2025
Contributions:13 releases, 52 reviews, 149 PRs in 1 year 9 months
NREL/fastsim
May 2023 - Apr 2025
Contributions:5 releases, 103 reviews, 159 PRs in 1 year 10 months
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