Tim Whisonant
Linux Kernel Engineering Manager at Canonical
Sacramento, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolTim Whisonant is a Linux kernel engineering manager and systems software veteran with over a decade of hands-on experience building low-level device software for FPGA accelerators, kernel drivers, and embedded firmware. He led key development on Intel’s OPAE SDK, designing cross-generation abstractions that let customers target kernel drivers, VFIO/UIO, or emulation transparently, and implemented a notable gRPC/Protobuf remoting plugin to drive remote acceleration workflows. Comfortable in C and C++, Tim leverages Python for automation and testing of kernel sysfs and mock systems, and is actively exploring Rust and modern C++ features to bring memory safety into low-level stacks. He blends pragmatic engineering—shipping quarterly open-source releases and triaging community issues—with systems-level craftsmanship, having built real-time thread schedulers and inter-thread primitives for microcontrollers. Based in Sacramento, he’s refocusing his career toward roles that reuse deep hardware-software expertise in new, architecture-forward contexts.
8 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (M.S.), Computer Science, Master of Science (M.S.), Computer Science at Clemson University
Github Skills (14)
acceleration10
machine-learning10
xilinx9
building-blocks9
lattice9
vivado9
fpga8
intel8
eda7
kernel6
linux-kernel6
linux5
backport4
yocto4
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
OFS/opae-sdk
Oct 2017 - Jan 2023
Open Programmable Acceleration Engine
Contributions:1197 reviews, 1228 commits, 1341 PRs in 5 years 4 months
accelerationprogrammablemachine-learning
OFS/opae-legacy
Feb 2020 - Jan 2023
Contributions:2 reviews, 66 PRs, 50 pushes in 2 years 11 months
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