Damon Kohler
Staff Software Engineer at Google
Bavaria, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDamon Kohler is a Staff Software Engineer at Google with 16 years of experience building distributed systems, developer tooling, and cloud products from Munich. He founded and leads influential open-source projects in robotics and mobile — notably Cartographer (real-time 2D/3D LiDAR SLAM), rosjava (ROS for Java/Android), and SL4A (scripting on Android) — bridging research-grade algorithms with production engineering. At Google he has rotated across diverse teams including Street View, Cloud Robotics and Sovereign Cloud, bringing a pragmatic systems mindset to both low-level infrastructure and developer-facing platforms. His hands-on contributions span mobile camera integration and ROS/Android tooling to core SLAM performance and build/documentation automation, reflecting deep full-stack and systems expertise. An alumnus of NC State with roots in advanced STEM education, he combines long-tenured corporate impact with a sustained track record of open-source leadership.
16 years of coding experience
High School, High School at North Carolina School of Science and MathematicsMaster's degree, Computer Science, Master's degree, Computer Science at North Carolina State University
English, German
Stackoverflow
452reputation
20kreached
7answers
3questions
Github Skills (37)
robotics10
c-language10
python10
android-sdk10
cmake10
travis-ci10
java10
mappings10
javas10
android10
system-integration10
build-automation10
sensor-fusion10
maven10
opengl-es10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
damonkohler/sl4a
Aug 2009 - Jun 2015
SL4A brings scripting languages to Android by allowing you to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:703 commits, 8 pushes, 1 branch in 5 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Damon's commits focused on improving the functionality of the SL4A project. Specifically, the user added debug logging to the chmod command and made the interpreter installation abort on a chmod failure, enhancing debugging and error handling. Further work involved fixing a merge issue and contributing to Perl-related configuration, indicating familiarity with the language and build processes. The user also cleaned up unnecessary methods.
scriptingandroidlanguagesjavainterpreters
rosjava/android_core
Jun 2011 - Oct 2014
Android libraries for rosjava
Role in this project:Mobile Developer (Android)
Mobile Developer (Android)Contributions:219 commits in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Damon was primarily focused on developing and improving the Android application. They moved the rosjava Android library to a new repository. The user implemented, debugged, and improved camera functionality for the Android application. They worked on refactoring and updating the code to use the latest APIs, focusing on the integration of new API changes and features, as well as bug fixes and stability enhancements. The user also refactored and improved existing Android components for functionality and performance.
kotlinrosjavaandroidandroid-libraries
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