Laura Abbott
Engineer at Oxide Computer Company
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolLaura Abbott is a seasoned kernel and embedded systems engineer with 15 years of experience building secure, memory-efficient low-level software for Linux and deeply embedded platforms. Based in Pittsburgh, she has driven kernel development at Qualcomm and Fedora/RHEL, and now develops memory-protected, message-passing kernels and device drivers at Oxide Computer Company. Her open-source work includes adding OpenTitan low-level debug support and AES crypto drivers to the Tock OS and implementing mutable leases and compact assertion macros for the Hubris kernel, demonstrating both security-minded design and code-size sensitivity. Comfortable across kernel memory management, peripheral drivers (SPI/I2C/USART), and cryptographic integration, she pairs deep technical expertise with practical debugging and mentoring experience. An under-the-radar strength is her knack for making low-level systems both small and secure, enabling constrained devices to expose robust debugging and crypto capabilities.
15 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science, BS, Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
Github Skills (25)
debugging10
debug10
architecture10
memory-management10
c-programming10
spi10
microcontroller10
security10
i2c10
kernel10
system10
low-level-programming10
device-driver10
sys10
kernel-mode10
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
oxidecomputer/hubris
Apr 2020 - Dec 2022
A lightweight, memory-protected, message-passing kernel for deeply embedded systems.
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:7 releases, 268 reviews, 327 commits in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Laura primarily contributed to the development of a lightweight, memory-protected kernel for embedded systems, focusing on functionality related to a message-passing kernel. Their contributions included adding features like mutable leases for memory manipulation, implementing a custom assertion macro to reduce code size, and refactoring to enhance efficiency. The user also developed drivers for key low level peripheral such as the SPI, I2C and USART for the LPC55 processor.
kernelmemoryprotectedrustc11
tock/tock
Jan 2020 - Mar 2020
A secure embedded operating system for microcontrollers
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:9 commits, 10 PRs, 1 push in 1 month
Contributions summary:Laura primarily contributed to the embedded operating system by adding support for the low-level debug system on the OpenTitan platform, enabling debugging capabilities. They integrated an AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) driver into the system and wrote tests for its ECB (Electronic Codebook) mode, demonstrating an understanding of cryptographic principles within an embedded context. These changes involved modifying hardware-specific code and implementing new features related to security and debugging.
kernelcortex-mrisc-vsecurebare-metal
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.