Max Thomas
Senior Firmware Security Engineer at NVIDIA
Alpine, Wyoming, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMax Thomas is a Senior Firmware Security Engineer with 14 years of experience specializing in reverse engineering, embedded systems, and firmware-level vulnerability research. Currently at NVIDIA, he brings deep hands-on skills in low-level drivers, DSP tooling, and cross-compilation—work honed at Ultraleap where he enabled TouchFree POS, macOS/Linux support, and INT8 TFLite inference for heterogeneous models. His open-source contributions include decompiling Pokémon Emerald RFU code and improving libnx for Nintendo Switch homebrew, evidencing a knack for unraveling legacy assembly and shaping robust low-level C code. Max combines practical security engineering with hardware tinkering—he’s prototyped hand tracking on Joy-Cons and developed DSP crash-watch utilities—showing an unusual blend of consumer-hardware curiosity and production-grade engineering. Based in Alpine, Wyoming, he pairs academic foundations from BYU with a pragmatic, tool-building approach that accelerates iteration on constrained platforms.
14 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Graduated, Graduated at East Career and Technical AcademyBrigham Young University-IdahoBachelor's degree, Bachelor's degree at Brigham Young University
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
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Github Skills (23)
nxos10
assembly10
switch10
decompilation10
c1110
gameboy-advance10
c1710
homebrew10
low-level-programming10
sys10
assemble10
assembler10
arm10
embedded10
communication-protocol10
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
switchbrew/libnx
Nov 2017 - Feb 2018
Library for Switch Homebrew
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer
Embedded Systems EngineerContributions:19 commits, 10 PRs, 5 comments in 3 months
Contributions summary:Max primarily worked on the `libnx` library, focusing on low-level system interactions and services for the Nintendo Switch. Their contributions include implementing and refining features related to input handling (keyboard, mouse, joystick), and network socket management. They also focused on the conversion of ELF files to NRO format and adjustments for the crt0 startup to align with the NRO structure.
devkitpronintendo-3ds3dsaarch64libnx
pret/pokeemerald
Sep 2017 - Oct 2017
Decompilation of Pokémon Emerald
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:11 commits, 1 PR, 2 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:Max focused on decompiling and understanding the code of the Pokémon Emerald game, specifically related to the radio frequency unit (RFU) functionality. Their contributions involved reverse engineering the `librfu` library, breaking it down into smaller functions, and implementing decompiled functions like `STWI_send_CP_EndREQ`, `STWI_send_DisconnectREQ`, and `STWI_send_TestModeREQ`. The user also refactored code for better readability and used a union to differentiate between 8-bit and 32-bit packet operations, demonstrating a deep understanding of the original assembly code and how to structure the decompiled C code.
cppmondecompilationemeraldgameboy-advance
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