John Tapsell
Principal Engineer at Providence
Irvine, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJohn Tapsell is a Principal Engineer with 17 years of experience building production-grade systems across AI, robotics, embedded firmware and full-stack applications. He blends deep academic credentials—a PhD in Engineering plus degrees in Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics—with hands-on delivery, from Linux kernel and low-level C/C++ drivers to React frontends and TensorFlow models. Notable achievements include an Android handwriting engine with 4+ million downloads, image-stitching and saliency ML deployed in a Super Bowl ad, and drone/rover control systems that span microcontroller realtime code to RobotOS. He maintains open-source projects like the KDE System Activity tool and contributes to high-profile repos such as QGroundControl and Open-Assistant, demonstrating a habit of improving UIs and telemetry visualization. Based in Irvine, CA, John is equally comfortable inventing hardware (hologram printers, battery controllers, pulsed laser meters) and shipping pragmatic software that bridges research and real-world products.
18 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
BSc Physics, BSc Physics at The Open UniversityBSc Computer Science, BSc Computer Science at The University of ManchesterA-Levels Maths Further Maths Computer Science and Physics, A-Levels Maths Further Maths Computer Science and Physics at Richmond Upon Thames CollegeDPhil PhD Engineering, DPhil PhD Engineering at University of Sussex
English, Japanese
Github Skills (25)
c-language10
qt10
typescript10
user-interface10
nextjs10
typescript-types10
typescripts10
cprogramming-language10
react10
mavlink9
javascript9
drones8
jtest8
css8
jestjs8
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
LAION-AI/Open-Assistant
Feb 2023 - Mar 2023
OpenAssistant is a chat-based assistant that understands tasks, can interact with third-party systems, and retrieve information dynamically to do so.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:27 reviews, 17 commits, 16 PRs in 1 month
Contributions summary:John primarily contributed to the website frontend, including fixing CSS bugs and setting up a scroll-to-message feature. They also implemented and integrated deletion functionality for messages within the admin interface, enhancing moderation capabilities. Additionally, the user made minor improvements to the TypeScript typing and fixed unit tests related to the website's functionality. The user also made Eslint and Babel fixes in the website codebase.
language-modelpythonpartyassistantchat
mavlink/qgroundcontrol
Oct 2013 - Jun 2014
Cross-platform ground control station for drones (Android, iOS, Mac OS, Linux, Windows)
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:44 commits in 8 months
Contributions summary:John primarily focused on improving the user interface and functionality of the QGroundControl application. They addressed several bugs related to data plotting and communication configuration, ensuring a more robust user experience. Key changes involved refactoring and enhancing the CommConfigurationWindow, including changes to link type selection, making it a proper QDialog, and fixing UI issues. The user also implemented a new XY plot widget with features like time-based scrolling and data smoothing, enhancing the application's data visualization capabilities.
androidioslinuxmacoswindows
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