Chad Rakoczy
Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChad Rakoczy is a software engineer based in Seattle and a Computer Science junior at the University of Michigan with three years of hands-on experience building production software. He currently works at AWS and previously interned there, bringing cloud-scale engineering practices to his projects. At UM::Autonomy he led AI efforts for an autonomous boat, implementing real-time computer vision, Velodyne LiDAR processing, and ROS integration while managing contributors and code quality. Chad is also an active contributor to the OpenJDK codebase, improving garbage collectors, compiler optimizations, and test coverage—an uncommon depth for a student engineer. His background spans test automation, back-end systems, and practical manufacturing tooling from internships, demonstrating an ability to move between research-grade robotics and production engineering. Colleagues describe him as a pragmatic leader who combines low-level systems work with team-driven delivery.
2 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School Diploma at Woodhaven High SchoolBachelor's degree, Computer Science, Junior, Bachelor's degree, Computer Science, Junior at University of Michigan College of Engineering
Github Skills (11)
openjdk10
javas10
jvm10
java10
testing10
collector9
garbage9
garbage-collection9
g9
compiler-optimization9
arm9
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
openjdk/jdk
Jul 2023 - Mar 2025
JDK main-line development https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:13 reviews, 11 PRs, 32 comments in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:Chad primarily contributed to the Java Development Kit (JDK) codebase, focusing on bug fixes and improvements. They addressed issues in various areas, including garbage collection (Shenandoah, ZGC), compiler optimizations (C1, AArch64), and testing frameworks. Their work involved modifying core source files and test files, ensuring the stability and performance of the JDK. A significant portion of their work involved improving the test suite to cover critical functionalities and edge cases.
openjdkjavajvmjdk
chadrako/jdk
Jul 2023 - Mar 2025
JDK main-line development https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk
Contributions:97 pushes, 30 branches in 1 year 8 months
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