Harald Schäfer
Chief Technology Officer at comma.ai
California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolHarald Schäfer is a pragmatic technology leader and Chief Technology Officer at comma.ai with 12 years of engineering experience building real-world autonomy and sensor systems. He progressed through roles from engineer to Head of Research to CTO, blending hands-on development with strategic R&D leadership in a fast-moving autonomous driving startup. His academic background includes an M.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from UC Santa Barbara (3.95 GPA) and a B.S. from KU Leuven, underpinning strengths in embedded systems, control, and GNSS processing. Harald has contributed to open-source GNSS tooling (commaai/laika), improving Kalman filter examples and GPS-only workflows to make positioning code more practical and reliable. Earlier, he co-founded VIBE haptics to empower visually impaired users with ultrasonic wearable navigation, showing a long-standing interest in assistive sensing and applied robotics. Based in California, he combines product-focused engineering, research rigor, and a bias for shipping robust, performance-conscious systems.
12 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering at University of LeuvenMaster’s Degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 3.95, Master’s Degree, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 3.95 at University of California, Santa Barbara
English, French, Dutch, German
Github Skills (3)
kalman-filter10
gps10
python10
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
commaai/laika
Nov 2018 - Jan 2023
Simple Python GNSS processing library
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:152 commits, 84 PRs, 164 pushes in 4 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Harald appears to have contributed to the core GNSS processing library, making several changes. These include adding a practical example for station position computation, modifying the code to use GPS-only satellite constellations, and introducing Kalman filter examples for better results. They also refined the code to improve performance and reliability within the GNSS library.
pythonglonassprocessing-librarygpsrtklib
ASGuard-UCI/openpilot
May 2021 - Jun 2021
openpilot is an open source driver assistance system. openpilot performs the functions of Automated Lane Centering and Adaptive Cruise Control for over 100 supported car makes and models.
Contributions:81 commits in 1 month
cruise-controlracingopenpilotadaptiveadaptive-cruise-control
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