Chris Forbes
Senior Software Engineer at Google
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChris Forbes is a Senior Software Engineer based in Wellington, New Zealand, with 16 years of experience building low-level graphics and tooling at scale, currently at Google. He specializes in Vulkan and SPIR-V ecosystems, contributing significant backend and validation work to flagship open-source projects such as the Vulkan Validation Layers, SPIRV-Tools, and Google’s GAPID graphics debugger. His background includes improving shader validation, optimizing SPIR-V parsers, and hardening development tools and test suites—skills honed through roles at LunarG, Collabora, and contributions to widely used examples and drivers. Comfortable across embedded firmware to graphics driver internals, he pairs deep systems-level expertise with a pragmatic focus on reliability and testability. A mathematician by training, he brings methodical problem-solving to complex API correctness and performance challenges.
16 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
BSc, Mathematics, Computer Science, BSc, Mathematics, Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington
Github Skills (35)
spirv10
debugging10
code-optimization10
vulkan10
debug10
c-language10
shader10
intel10
validations10
testing10
glsl10
validation10
graphic10
data-structure10
go10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers
Apr 2015 - Feb 2019
Vulkan Validation Layers (VVL)
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:748 commits, 17 PRs, 26 pushes in 3 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Chris contributed to the development of Vulkan validation layers, specifically focusing on shader-related validation. Their work involved implementing checks for various shader interactions, including the validation of input and output interfaces between shader stages and the validation of correct use of image views. The user's contributions enhanced the robustness of the Vulkan validation layers by implementing more thorough validation of shader pipelines, including correct handling of data structures and API calls.
vulkanlayersvalidation
aras-p/glsl-optimizer
Sep 2013 - Sep 2014
GLSL optimizer based on Mesa's GLSL compiler. Used to be used in Unity for mobile shader optimization.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:266 commits in 1 year
Contributions summary:Chris primarily contributed to the Mesa 3D Graphics Library, focusing on the i965 driver, a component related to Intel's integrated graphics hardware. Their work centered on enhancing support for the ARB_gpu_shader5 extension, adding functionalities like textureGatherOffsets, implementing new shader opcodes for pixel interpolator, and optimizing the handling of pixel and sample mask computations for improved performance. They also fixed several issues related to texture view, compressed texture pixel storage, and corrected several typos.
metalshadersoptimizationgame-developmentcompiler
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