Summary
Christopher Woodruff is an electronics and FPGA engineer with a decade of experience designing and operating spaceborne laser ranging and GPS instruments at JPL, currently serving as Operations Lead for the GRACE-FO Laser Ranging Interferometer. He combines deep DSP and real-time FPGA expertise—implementing phasemeters, Pound-Drever-Hall controllers, and frequency-offset phaselockers—with hands-on systems engineering for mission integration, commissioning, and flight operations. Christopher champions modern development practices for hardware teams, having introduced git-based workflows, CI-driven FPGA builds, automated simulation, and FPGA-in-the-loop testing at JPL. Comfortable in MATLAB and Python and unapologetically a Vi user, he bridges low-level digital logic with higher-level test and verification tools to reduce risk on flight hardware. Based in Pasadena, his work uniquely spans lab development, international spacecraft integration, and live instrument operations, reflecting both technical depth and operational leadership.
10 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree, Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree, Engineering at Harvey Mudd College
English, German, Spanish