Michael Gerlek
Principal Engineer at InferLink
Bainbridge Island, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Gerlek is a principal engineer and seasoned technology leader with over two decades of hands-on experience spanning geospatial software, large-scale data management, computer vision, machine learning, high-performance/distributed computing, and compiler design. He has led engineering teams across startups, public sector organizations, and enterprise companies—most recently as Principal Engineer at InferLink after serving as VP of Engineering at Apira and Director of Engineering at Orbital Insight. A longtime open-source contributor and former OSGeo board member, his technical footprint includes substantial contributions to prominent geospatial projects like PDAL and libLAS, improving point-cloud parsing, spatial reference handling, and metadata support. Equally comfortable in C++ back-ends and systems-level work, he combines deep technical craftsmanship with leadership in productizing complex data pipelines for real-world analytics. Based on Bainbridge Island, he’s not currently seeking new roles, and brings a pragmatic inventor’s mindset shaped by early compiler work at Intel and research at Los Alamos.
15 years of coding experience
28 years of employment as a software developer
MS Computer Science, MS Computer Science at Oregon Graduate InstituteBS Computer Science, BS Computer Science at Merrimack College
Stackoverflow
182reputation
29kreached
3answers
3questions
Github Skills (16)
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
point-cloud10
python10
geotiff9
unit-testing9
gdal9
data-structures8
data-structure8
winforms6
docker6
wpf6
interop6
directx6
slimdx6
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
PDAL/PDAL
Feb 2011 - Jun 2015
PDAL is Point Data Abstraction Library. GDAL for point cloud data.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Data Engineer
Back-end Developer & Data EngineerContributions:1031 commits, 11 PRs, 40 pushes in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Michael's commits indicate the development of parsing and handling of point cloud data. Their work focused on creating functions to add and edit different elements inside a point cloud, including the extraction of dimension data, especially for processing with a Python framework. Furthermore, the user implemented tests for the parser to make sure everything worked as expected.
point-cloudabstraction-librarypointgdaldata-abstraction
libLAS/libLAS
Dec 2010 - Jul 2011
C++ library and programs for reading and writing ASPRS LAS format with LiDAR data
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:112 commits in 7 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the `src/lasspatialreference.cpp` file, indicating a focus on spatial reference handling within the project. They introduced changes related to the use of GDAL and GeoTIFF libraries, indicating integration efforts for geospatial data processing. The commits included modifications to variable length records (VLRs) and well-known text (WKT) support, suggesting improvements to how spatial metadata is stored and managed. They also modified the factory class, which involved changes to the internal structure and implementation of the code.
file-format-librarypythonpoint-cloud-librarypoint-cloud-processingc-library
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