Chris Piker
Senior Database Architect & Spacecraft Operations Support
Iowa City, Iowa, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolChris Piker is a Senior Database Architect and spacecraft operations software engineer with over two decades of hands-on experience delivering mission-critical ground systems and long-term data archives for NASA instruments. Based at the University of Iowa, he designs low-level C libraries and large Python toolchains that power downlink operations, calibration, and science data distribution for missions like Juno, Cassini, Mars Express and the Van Allen Probes. He built and maintains das2, a network-efficient architecture for very large time-series datasets, and has authored large codebases (tens of thousands of lines) tuned for real-time telemetry and archival workflows. Comfortable across systems, databases, and embedded-style C, he combines physics training with practical engineering to keep complex spacecraft data flowing from antenna to archive. An often-unspoken strength is his focus on long-lived, maintainable tooling that supports decades-long science missions rather than short-lived prototypes.
8 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, Physics and Mathematics, 3.96, Bachelor of Science - BS, Physics and Mathematics, 3.96 at The University of Southern MississippiPhysics, Physics at University of Iowa
English
Github Skills (43)
dub9
stream8
libpq8
postgresql7
catalog7
common-data-format7
url-parser6
database6
dmd6
nasa-api6
programming-language6
build-management5
physics5
ada5
data-format5
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
das-developers/das2pro
May 2019 - Jul 2019
Contributions:6 releases, 54 commits, 51 pushes in 1 month
das-developers/das2dlm
Feb 2020 - Dec 2023
IDL binary extension das2 client (in development)
Contributions:4 releases, 10 PRs, 132 pushes in 3 years 10 months
das2adaidlurl-parser
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