Michael O'kelly
Employee 2, Director Of Backend Engineering at Cobalt Robotics
Mountain View, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael O'kelly is a seasoned engineering leader and founder with 13+ years building production ML, CV, and backend systems for robotics and cybersecurity. Currently Director of Backend Engineering at Cobalt Robotics, he owns real-time onboard computer vision, cloud backend architecture, and enterprise security operations, and led the company to SOC 2 Type 2 certification. He previously scaled data-driven products at Bugcrowd and PlanGrid and founded a YC-backed startup that shipped consumer CV apps, combining deep research chops (PhD in Biophysics from MIT) with pragmatic product delivery. Michael is equally comfortable in TensorFlow and Django, and has repeatedly reduced costs and latency while improving reliability across distributed systems. A practiced mentor and culture builder, he invented "friendliness-focused" interviewing and training programs adopted across teams. Unusually, he pairs high-stakes engineering with adventurous curiosity—he once spent two weeks at the South Pole on a microwave telescope and codes from solo backpacking trips.
13 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Y CombinatorPhD Physics (Biophysics), PhD Physics (Biophysics) at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBard College at Simon's RockBSc Physics Mathematics Chemistry, BSc Physics Mathematics Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University
Github Skills (31)
osmand9
bugsnag8
error-reporting8
exceptions7
crash7
tornado7
django7
python7
mongodb6
flask6
machine-learning6
celery6
vowpal-wabbit6
data-structures5
android5
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
mokelly/frecency
May 2013 - Aug 2020
Frecency library for Python and Django -- efficient data structures for recency-weighted counting and measurements
Contributions:10 commits, 1 PR, 6 pushes in 7 years 4 months
data-structuredata-structuresdjangopython
mokelly/wabbit_wappa
Apr 2014 - Jun 2015
Wabbit Wappa is a full-featured Python wrapper for the Vowpal Wabbit machine learning utility.
Contributions:37 commits, 1 PR, 1 push in 1 year 2 months
machine-learningpythonvowpal-wabbit
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