Dick Hollenbeck
CTO at SoftPLC Corporation
Spicewood, Texas, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDick Hollenbeck is a veteran technology leader and CTO with nearly four decades at SoftPLC, where he designed a full industrial control stack—from embedded Linux runtimes and high‑speed incremental compilers to networking, interpreters, and hardware IP blocks—deployed in major power plants including Grand Coulee. He combines deep systems and hardware expertise (Verilog IP, custom CPUs, Ethernet switches, power supplies) with software breadth across C/C++, Java (including an early JVM with a real‑time incremental GC), Python and Node.js. A hands‑on architect who also maintains an embedded Linux distro (Gatecraft) and has led open source KiCad to critical mass, he excels at reverse engineering and pragmatic problem solving that bridges customer needs and market opportunity. Based in Spicewood, TX, he brings rare full‑stack industrial control experience and a proven track record of turning complex industrial requirements into robust, fielded systems.
26 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
B.S., Chemical Engineering, ~3.7, B.S., Chemical Engineering, ~3.7 at University of Wisconsin-MadisonFreshman, Biochemistry path, A's of course. Got the highest grade in my freshman calculus class., Freshman, Biochemistry path, A's of course. Got the highest grade in my freshman calculus class. at Brown University
German
Github Skills (19)
uart10
c-language10
eda10
device-tree10
dts10
beagleboard10
sys10
dt10
beaglebone-black10
embedded10
beagle10
cprogramming-language10
adc9
c178
cad8
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
KiCad/kicad-source-mirror
Apr 2010 - Jul 2017
This is an active mirror of the KiCad development branch, which is hosted at GitLab (updated every time something is pushed). Pull requests on GitHub are not accepted or watched.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:1545 commits in 7 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Dick primarily contributed to the Eeschema and Pcbnew parts of the KiCad project. Their work focused on improving core functionality, including fixing a search segfault issue in Eeschema, addressing a bug in the BOM generation process, and resolving a problem with P-CAD ASCII file import. They also made enhancements to the github plugin, and improved various plotting and drill file generation features.
3d-modelshostedgitlabupdatedkicad
RobertCNelson/bb.org-overlays
Nov 2015 - Dec 2015
Device Tree Overlays for bb.org boards
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:19 commits in 17 days
Contributions summary:Dick primarily contributed Device Tree Overlays (DTOs) for Beaglebone boards, specifically related to enabling and configuring eQEP (Quadrature Encoder Pulse) interfaces and UART peripherals. Their work involved modifying pin configurations, setting hardware statuses, and defining operational parameters within the DTO files. They also added support for ADC channels, reflecting a focus on hardware interaction and peripheral configuration. The user demonstrated expertise in configuring hardware interfaces through Device Tree files.
device-treeoverlays
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