Ryan Harrison
Senior Software Developer at Google
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRyan Harrison is a senior software developer based in Kitchener with 11+ years of experience specializing in low-level systems that broadened into a generalist role across graphics, testing, UI, and build infrastructure. He currently focuses on WGSL and WebGPU shader language support at Google and has deep, production-facing experience in Chromium, ChromiumOS, and PDFium. His work spans compiler and shader toolchains—contributing to notable open-source projects such as glslang, shaderc, and SPIRV-Tools—where he’s improved validation, added WASM builds, and tightened spec accuracy. Ryan excels at gluing modules together, building robust process and fuzzing infrastructure, and tackling subtle, detail-heavy problems others overlook. He prefers non-US roles and brings a track record of shipping platform-level fixes that quietly make large codebases more correct and maintainable. Curious and pragmatic, he often volunteers to fix broken bits that improve developer productivity and long-term reliability.
11 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
M.Sc., Computer Science, M.Sc., Computer Science at University of Saskatchewan
English
Github Skills (23)
spirv10
vulkan10
builtin10
c-language10
gpgpu10
shader10
testing10
glsl10
compiler-compiler10
wgsl10
gpu10
webgpu10
accelerated-computing10
compiler10
hlsl10
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
google/shaderc
May 2019 - Jul 2021
A collection of tools, libraries, and tests for Vulkan shader compilation.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:27 reviews, 189 commits, 406 PRs in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Ryan primarily focused on improving the SPIR-V cross-compiler, shader compilation, and reflection API for Vulkan shaders within the google/shaderc repository. The contributions included modifying the compiler to support WebGPU SPIR-V transformations, implementing a new API for generating Vulkan-specific SPIR-V output, and refactoring parts of the code for increased modularity. Furthermore, the user added new MSL features and refactored the testing infrastructure.
compilationvulkanspirv-crosscompilerspirv
KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Tools
Nov 2018 - May 2022
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:29 reviews, 120 commits, 231 PRs in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Ryan's contributions primarily revolve around enhancing the SPIR-V tools, specifically focusing on improving the validation process. They added a fuzzer for the spvBinaryParser, improving its robustness, and implemented validation rules to ensure correctness based on the Vulkan and WebGPU specifications. Further contributions included adding test cases and fixing issues related to several key components, such as the OpVariable and OpControlBarrier. This work is essential for maintaining the quality and compliance of the SPIR-V toolchain.
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