David Kamholz
Lead Software Engineer at Capital One
Oakland, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Kamholz is a Lead Software Engineer with two decades of experience at the intersection of software development and linguistics, currently driving backend and data initiatives at Capital One. He specializes in language data, Unicode, relational databases, data sanitization, and building reliable backend systems, with hands-on experience integrating SQLite-backed corpora for projects like NLTK's PanLexLite. His career spans academic research (PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley), language-technology product leadership at The Long Now Foundation, and applied language database work for VU Amsterdam, reflecting a rare blend of research rigor and production engineering. A thoughtful team builder and technical writer, he has improved usability and documentation for open-source keyboard projects while leading cross-functional teams to deliver tools for underserved languages. Colleagues rely on him for solving tricky data-processing problems and translating complex linguistic requirements into practical, production-ready systems.
14 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Linguistics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Linguistics at University of California, BerkeleyBachelor’s Degree, Linguistics, Bachelor’s Degree, Linguistics at University of Michigan
Russian, Spanish, German, Indonesian, French, Portuguese, Italian, Yiddish, Dutch
Github Skills (14)
nltk10
keyboard-layout10
nlp10
sqlite10
python10
natural-language-processing10
documentation10
user-guide9
sql9
user-manual9
guideline9
data-structures8
data-structure8
unicode7
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
keymanapp/keyboards
Jun 2019 - Aug 2020
Open Source Keyman keyboards
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:37 commits, 9 PRs, 12 comments in 1 year 1 month
Contributions summary:David primarily focused on enhancing and updating documentation within the repository. Their contributions include adding, improving, and cleaning up help files for various keyboard layouts, such as Aksara Bali, ITRANS, and others. They also updated and corrected existing documentation, demonstrating a focus on clarity and accuracy in the project's user guides. This suggests a strong emphasis on improving the usability and understanding of the keyboard layouts.
keyboardskeymanimekeyboard-eventskeyboard
nltk/nltk
Nov 2015 - Dec 2015
NLTK Source
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:10 commits, 7 pushes, 2 comments in 13 days
Contributions summary:David primarily focused on enhancing the `nltk/nltk` repository's PanLexLite corpus reader. Their contributions included implementing methods for translation, simplifying the constructor, updating the file structure, and cleaning up documentation. The changes involved modifying the Python code, SQL queries, and data structures within the corpus reader, which suggests a strong understanding of the codebase and its integration with the PanLex Lite database. Furthermore, the user demonstrated expertise in working with SQLite databases.
nlppythonmachine-learningnltknatural-language-processing
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