Michael Zilske
Co-Founder at GraphHopper
Oakland, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Zilske is a seasoned software entrepreneur and co-founder based in Oakland with 16 years of experience building backend systems for transportation and routing. He helped found and lead GraphHopper, contributing deep technical expertise to an open-source routing engine used with OpenStreetMap. His hands-on work includes implementing the initial Isochrone API, reachability algorithms, and GTFS realtime handling—features that power route planning and accessibility analyses. Michael also contributed to MATSim’s core simulation libraries, focusing on vehicle conservation, area-toll-aware re-routing, and integration tests that strengthen simulation fidelity. He blends systems-level thinking with pragmatic coding, often tackling algorithmic challenges in Java for performance-critical geospatial workloads. Colleagues would describe him as an engineer-founder who prefers shipping robust, testable infrastructure over hype.
16 years of coding experience
Dr.-Ing., Dr.-Ing. at Technische Universität Berlin
Github Skills (17)
apidoc10
routing-slip10
java10
javas10
api10
routes10
api-design9
restful-api9
testing9
openstreetmap9
api-rest9
spatial-data9
geospatial9
geo9
rest-api9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
matsim-org/matsim-libs
Nov 2009 - May 2021
Multi-Agent Transport Simulation
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:5 releases, 1720 commits, 28 PRs in 11 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Michael's commits primarily focus on unifying provider-setting syntax, integrating Cadyts integration tests, event writer skeletons, and refactoring for area-toll-aware re-routing. They also worked on the conservation of vehicles, indicating involvement in core system logic. The code changes involve modifications to the scoring and replanning components.
multi-agentsimulationmatsimtransportation-planningagent-based
graphhopper/graphhopper
Sep 2016 - Jan 2023
Open source routing engine for OpenStreetMap. Use it as Java library or standalone web server.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 25 reviews, 1046 commits in 6 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Michael implemented the initial version of the Isochrone API, contributing to the core routing engine for OpenStreetMap. Their work involved adding reachability algorithms and handling path calculation within the Java library. This included modifying core Java files within the isochrone package as well as creating a Java HTTP servlet. Additionally, they contributed to code involving GTFS realtime updates and refactored transfer logic.
javaopenstreetmapwebservergeospatialdijkstra
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