Ralf Kunstleve
Software Engineer at NVIDIA
Menlo Park, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRalf Kunstleve is a seasoned software engineer with 25 years of experience specializing in Python-C++ bindings and hybrid system integration, currently contributing to NVIDIA’s CUDA Python team. He has been a pybind11 maintainer since 2020, created the pybind11k fork to unify PyCLIF and pybind11, and previously maintained Boost.Python, reflecting deep, long-running stewardship of the Python/C++ ecosystem. At Google he led large-scale refactors and ML-driven systems work, and his open-source contributions touch high-profile projects like TensorFlow and PyMOL as well as security-hardening in Tink. Ralf combines system administration, build engineering, and complex C++ algorithm development with a strong sense of ownership, rapid responsiveness, and an emphasis on reliability. A PhD-trained scientist with roots in computational crystallography, he brings both rigorous research experience and practical production engineering to bridge scientific code and industrial-scale software.
25 years of coding experience
29 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Chemistry, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Chemistry at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule ZürichDiplom, Mineralogy, Diplom, Mineralogy at Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Github Skills (41)
crypto10
c-language10
visualization10
python10
testing10
visual10
machine-learning10
build-system10
cmake10
c1110
visualize10
security10
c1710
code-generation10
tensorflow10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
pybind/pybind11
Dec 2019 - Jan 2023
Seamless operability between C++11 and Python
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Automation EngineerContributions:5 releases, 1336 reviews, 1441 commits in 3 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Ralf primarily contributed to the pybind11 project by modifying and enhancing the C++ library's functionality, with a focus on code quality and robustness. Their contributions included improvements to type casters for various C++ types, and improved the overall structure to reduce code duplication and improve performance. Further, they added code to improve the test suite and the documentation, ensuring that the software meets the goals of the project.
pythoncpppython-bindingsseamlessbindings
google/clif
Sep 2020 - Dec 2022
Binding generator to wrap C++ for Python using LLVM.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Build Engineer
Back-end Developer & Build EngineerContributions:81 commits, 85 PRs, 365 pushes in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Ralf primarily contributed to the PyCLIF project by implementing features related to binding C++ code for Python. Their work included adding postprocessing functions, refactoring code related to type conversions and memory management, and enabling conversion of Python containers to STL containers. They also focused on improving the build system, adding a top-level `pass` keyword for the .clif files and working on resolving build issues and dependencies within the project.
llvmbindingcode-generationpythoncpp
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