Ulrich Hornung
Principal Software Engineer at Leica Geosystems part of Hexagon
St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolUlrich Hornung is a Principal Software Engineer with over a decade at Leica Geosystems, advancing from embedded systems developer to technical lead on optical tracking and precision geospatial software. He combines deep systems-level expertise in C++, Rust, Python and C# with practical experience in async and network design to deliver robust algorithmic and embedded solutions. His work spans FPGA-based image pipelines, markerless 3D tracking, and resilient handling of edge cases in file and stream processing—skills reflected in open-source contributions to the Rust coreutils rewrite where he tackled tricky non-seekable file behavior and build performance. Based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, he pairs hands-on coding with mentorship and cross-disciplinary collaboration to push product innovation. Notably, his background includes early in-memory database porting at IBM and research on efficient embedded systems, giving him a rare blend of academic rigor and production engineering.
9 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (M.Sc.), Informatik, Master of Science (M.Sc.), Informatik at Technische Hochschule Augsburg
German, English
Github Skills (10)
command-line-tool10
rust10
cross-platform10
gnu-coreutils10
fileio9
file-access9
busybox9
file-handling9
file-processing9
automated-tests8
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
uutils/coreutils
Dec 2023 - Sep 2024
Cross-platform Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:62 reviews, 61 PRs, 185 comments in 8 months
Contributions summary:Ulrich primarily contributed to the `head` and `install` utilities within the `coreutils` project. Their work involved implementing backward reading functionality for non-seekable files in the `head` utility, addressing edge cases related to /proc and pipes. Furthermore, they fixed issues with the `install` utility, particularly related to handling of strip programs, standard output, and destination paths, ensuring correct behavior during file installation. Additionally, they made changes to improve the performance of the build process.
command-line-toolrustlinuxgnucoreutils
cre4ture/thingium
Aug 2024 - Mar 2025
Open Source Continuous File Synchronization
Contributions:11 releases, 10 PRs, 350 pushes in 7 months
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