John Cortell
Owner at Cortell Home Improvement
North Carolina, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJohn Cortell is a seasoned embedded systems and tools engineer with over three decades of software development experience and nearly two decades in senior engineering roles, now channeling his passion into running Cortell Home Improvement in North Carolina. He has led teams and shipped complex developer tools and debugging solutions at companies like NXP/Freescale, Magic Leap, and Samsung, and contributed meaningful fixes and UI improvements to prominent open-source projects such as ARMmbed’s DAPLink and the Eclipse Embedded CDT pyOCD plugin. Known for bridging low-level firmware, tooling, and user-facing developer experiences, he combines deep technical craftsmanship (debuggers, trace/profiling tools, CI automation) with a penchant for documentation, mentoring, and developer productivity. An early adopter of Agile and continuous integration practices, he also brings practical scripting and automation skills across Python, Tcl, Perl and shell, and an unusual career pivot that pairs high-end embedded engineering pedigree with hands-on home improvement entrepreneurship.
19 years of coding experience
34 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services, Bachelor’s Degree Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services at St. John's UniversityBachelor’s Degree Computer Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree Computer Engineering at Manhattan University 
English, Spanish
Github Skills (16)
firmware10
arm10
debugging10
embedded10
debug10
cortex-m10
eclipse10
microcontroller10
java9
build-automation9
testing9
ui-design9
javas9
cmsis8
risc-v8
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
ARMmbed/DAPLink
Mar 2016 - Apr 2016
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:24 commits, 17 PRs, 21 comments in 24 days
Contributions summary:John primarily contributed to the DAPLink project by addressing build and test infrastructure issues, along with modifications to support a new hardware target (FRDM-KL28Z). These changes included correcting the build process to avoid closing the console window and ensuring the test suite functions correctly with the `--notestendpt` flag. The user also made improvements to error messages and documentation and added the new FRDM-KL28Z target.
firmwaremicrocontrollermbeddebugmcu
eclipse-embed-cdt/eclipse-plugins
Feb 2016 - Mar 2016
The Eclipse Embedded CDT plug-ins for Arm & RISC-V C/C++ developers (formerly known as the GNU MCU Eclipse plug-ins). Includes the archive of previous plug-ins versions, as Releases.
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:15 commits, 13 PRs, 34 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:John primarily contributed to the pyOCD plugin, focusing on improving the user interface and functionality for debugging embedded systems. Their work involved refactoring and updating the UI elements, such as the debugger tab, and fixing bugs related to launch configuration and gdbserver integration. They also addressed specific issues, such as handling processor lists and executable paths, demonstrating a focus on improving the user experience and addressing technical limitations within the plugin.
risc-vcdttheiaarchivegnu
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