Richard Howe
Automation Engineer
Durham, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRichard Howe is an Automation Engineer with seven years of experience blending cybersecurity, embedded systems, and test automation, currently driving automation work at IBM from Durham, NC. He brings a strong security-first mindset from roles in vulnerability management, red-team exercises, and Navy-grade radio repair, complemented by hands-on firmware and web development earlier in his career. An active open-source contributor, Richard has improved usability and correctness in flagship scientific Python projects like pandas and NumPy—adding documentation, bug fixes, datetime/timezone fixes, and unit tests that help millions of users. He pairs practical scripting chops (Python, C/C++, Node.js) with systems thinking developed at NASA SUITS and in the Marines, where he led teams and managed high-value encrypted communications hardware. Outside of day-to-day engineering he invents, blogs, and maintains a public GitHub portfolio, demonstrating a habit of turning research and field experience into reproducible code and clear documentation.
7 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science, 3.61, Bachelor's degree, Computer Science, 3.61 at North Carolina State UniversityAssociate of Science - AS, Computer Science, GPA: 3.67, Associate of Science - AS, Computer Science, GPA: 3.67 at Durham Technical Community College
Spanish, English
Github Skills (17)
unit-testing10
datetime10
python10
pandas10
datetimes10
numpy10
documentation10
test-automation10
data-analysis10
excel8
c-language7
c117
sql7
c177
cprogramming-language7
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
pandas-dev/pandas
Feb 2023 - Feb 2025
Flexible and powerful data analysis / manipulation library for Python, providing labeled data structures similar to R data.frame objects, statistical functions, and much more
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Documentation Specialist
Back-end Developer & Documentation SpecialistContributions:92 reviews, 35 PRs, 261 comments in 2 years
Contributions summary:Richard primarily contributed to documentation updates, including docstrings and user guide modifications, enhancing the pandas library's usability. They also worked on bug fixes and feature enhancements related to specific aspects of the library, such as time delta, excel engines, JSON and HTML reading/writing, and SQL integration. The commits demonstrate a focus on refining existing functionalities, addressing deprecations, and improving user experience through better documentation. The user also introduced a fix related to boolean casting for `read_excel`.
pythondatalabeled-datamanipulationdataframes
numpy/numpy
Jul 2023 - Nov 2023
The fundamental package for scientific computing with Python.
Role in this project:Backend Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Backend Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:1 review, 1 PR, 7 comments in 4 months
Contributions summary:Richard primarily focused on enhancing the NumPy library's datetime functionality, particularly addressing timezone handling. Their contributions involved modifying existing code and adding new unit tests to ensure correctness and robustness. The changes included adjusting deprecation warnings, fixing formatting errors, and updating documentation, along with associated unit test adjustments to reflect these code modifications.
lapackpythonmpindarrayconvolution
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