Ryan Friedman
Company Owner at FriedmanWorx
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRyan Friedman is an autonomy and robotics software engineer with nine years of experience building ROS2-based systems for perception, controls, sensor drivers, and multi-vehicle telemetry. He has led firmware and autonomy work at Trimble and AeroVironment—refactoring legacy stacks to ROS2 and shipping autonomy features on multiple UAV and ground platforms, and is currently focused on L4 autonomous compaction and UAS-integrated X‑ray systems. A hands-on engineer and founder, he runs FriedmanWorx consulting and contributes to high-profile open-source ROS2 projects, improving navigation safety and developer documentation. Ryan combines low-level firmware and networking expertise with applied research from an MS in Mechanical Engineering, enabling pragmatic solutions for safety-critical vehicles. He’s comfortable across the stack from GDB-level debugging and compiler-hardening to system-level telemetry and testing fixtures—often surfacing subtle documentation and code-quality improvements that harden deployments. Based in Boulder, he brings a practiced blend of product delivery, field testing, and community-driven engineering to autonomy programs.
9 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science - MS, Mechanical Engineering at Colorado School of MinesBoulder High
Spanish
Github Skills (13)
compiler-optimization10
c-language10
cmake10
cprogramming-language10
ros10
documentation10
navigation-drawer9
navigationview9
navigationbar9
robotics9
error-handling9
gdb9
devops8
Programming languages (22)
Github contributions (5)
ros2/ros2_documentation
Jun 2023 - Feb 2025
ROS 2 docs repository
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:51 reviews, 8 PRs, 87 comments in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:Ryan primarily contributed to the documentation of the ROS 2 project, specifically addressing documentation inconsistencies and improving guides for developers. They focused on documenting debugging techniques using GDB, clarifying instructions for setting up and using the build process, and adding examples for source pull requests. Their work centered on refining the existing documentation and adding important details.
roboticsros-2rosros2
ros-navigation/navigation2
Jan 2023 - Nov 2024
ROS 2 Navigation Framework and System
Role in this project:Backend & DevOps Engineer
Backend & DevOps EngineerContributions:58 reviews, 17 PRs, 146 comments in 1 year 9 months
Contributions summary:Ryan primarily contributed to improving the ROS 2 navigation framework's codebase by addressing compiler warnings and enforcing code quality standards. Their work includes fixing "shadow" errors, uninitialized value issues, and integrating new compiler flags for enhanced code safety. Furthermore, the user implemented a TwistStamped publisher, adding a new parameter for selecting to stamp the twist data, and also made changes to improve the codebase to support different message types.
roboticsros2autonomous-robotsrosnavigation
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