Michael Day
Senior Software Engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Day is a Senior Software Engineer with 12+ years building simulation, robotics, and control systems across industrial, government, and academic settings. He specializes in modeling and simulation for small unmanned aerial platforms, having led software for a record-breaking fixed-wing drone swarm including autopilot, simulator, and companion computer deployment. Comfortable across Windows, macOS, and *nix, he blends back-end and full-stack work with CI/continuous deployment practices at Georgia Tech Research Institute. An active contributor to MAVLink and MAVProxy tooling, he has implemented rally-point management, telemetry processing, and MATLAB-friendly log exports that improve interoperability for drone developers. His background spans aerospace, serious games, and training simulations, giving him a rare combination of practical field systems experience and research-driven problem solving. Michael pairs deep domain expertise in swarm robotics, vision, and AI with a proven ability to move lab prototypes into operational systems.
12 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science / Mathematics, BS, Computer Science / Mathematics at University of Alabama in HuntsvilleMS, Computer Science, MS, Computer Science at Naval Postgraduate School
English, Portuguese
Stackoverflow
129reputation
31kreached
7answers
2questions
Github Skills (21)
python10
mavlink10
front-end-development10
file-handling10
package-development9
command-line-interface9
plugin-development9
command-line9
cli9
drupal-module9
matlab8
tab-completion8
algorithm7
algorithms7
embedded6
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
mavlink/mavlink
Oct 2013 - Jul 2016
Marshalling / communication library for drones.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:22 commits, 11 PRs, 7 comments in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the pymavlink library, focusing on tools for processing and manipulating MAVLink data. Their work included implementing features for loading and saving rally points, adding options to show parameter changes in mavparms.py, and generating more MATLAB-friendly M files from tlogs. They also fixed bugs in the rally loader and added functionality to identify and handle loiter waypoints, including the addition of a `set_alt` method for modifying rally point altitudes.
communication-librarydronescommunicationmarshalling
ArduPilot/MAVProxy
Sep 2013 - Apr 2015
MAVLink proxy and command line ground station
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:53 commits, 13 PRs, 10 comments in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on enhancing the MAVProxy ground station, implementing features such as rally point management, arm/disarm commands, and throttle arm checks. They reorganized the codebase by moving rally point functionality into a dedicated module. Furthermore, the user introduced improvements to the user interface via the addition of tab completion. Their contributions also include adding a GUI editor to edit waypoints.
ground-stationpythonproxymavlink-proxystation
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