Donald Sharp
Principal Engineer at NVIDIA
Apex, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDonald Sharp is a Principal Engineer with 12+ years of experience leading teams to design, debug, and ship robust network software across companies like NVIDIA, Cumulus Networks, and Cisco. He combines hands-on systems expertise—from kernel modules to routing daemons—with a pragmatic, roll-up-your-sleeves leadership style that teams trust for troubleshooting and delivery. A prolific contributor to major open-source routing projects (FRRouting, Quagga, iproute2), he has improved BGP/PIM handling, route management, and kernel-route interactions to harden real-world network platforms. Praised for building rapport and influencing cross-functional teams, he excels at turning ambiguous failures into repeatable architecture and testing improvements. Outside work he’s an avid cyclist, a hobby that mirrors his approach: disciplined, endurance-oriented, and occasionally geared for adventurous problem solving.
12 years of coding experience
25 years of employment as a software developer
BS Computer Engineering, BS Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech
Github Skills (24)
debug10
networkmanager10
net10
ip10
linux10
c-programming10
c1110
linux-kernel10
networking10
c1710
manage10
network-protocol10
netlink10
management10
bgp10
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
FRRouting/frr
Jul 2017 - Jan 2023
The FRRouting Protocol Suite
Role in this project:
Back-end & Network Engineer
Back-end & Network EngineerContributions:3 releases, 1523 reviews, 1258 commits in 5 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Donald primarily contributed to the FRRouting (FRR) Protocol Suite, focusing on enhancements within the zebra module. Their work involved adding functionalities to the existing code, such as displaying more information about the running state, including features like adding a new command for setting the time of a nexthop group deletion. They also addressed issues with the management of routes, particularly regarding route replacement operations and the handling of kernel routes during interface state changes. These contributions demonstrate a focus on improving the robustness and feature set of the network management component.
mplspbrvrrpripngevpn
Quagga/quagga
Jan 2015 - May 2017
Quagga Tracking repository - Master is at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/quagga.git
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:167 commits in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Donald primarily contributed to bug fixes and code improvements within the Quagga routing software project. Their work involved addressing issues related to incorrect define usage, memory leaks, and potential vulnerabilities, specifically in the handling of BGP and PIMD functionalities. They also focused on refactoring and consolidating code, such as unifying random number generators and combining similar functions to improve code maintainability and efficiency. In addition, they fixed the handling of several commands, as well as memory leaks.
pythonmastertrackinggnucgit
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