William Jamieson
Senior Software Engineer at Space Telescope Science Institute
Germantown, Maryland, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWilliam Jamieson is a Senior Software Engineer with nine years of experience building and hardening scientific Python software for astronomical missions. Currently at the Space Telescope Science Institute, he combines back-end development and QA to improve production tools for JWST data processing and maintains core functionality in the widely used astropy library. His PhD in Mathematics underpins a methodical approach to numerical robustness—evident in fixes to astropy.modeling and convolution routines that improved multi-dimensional and integer input handling. William’s work spans production-grade engineering (bounding box and mode handling for NIRSpec/NIRISS) and test hygiene, showing a strong focus on reproducibility and long-term maintainability. He contributes to high-impact open-source projects relied upon by the astronomy community, blending academic rigor with practical software craft. Based in Germantown, MD, he brings a rare combination of research training, production delivery, and open-source stewardship.
9 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Mathematics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Mathematics at University of Nebraska-LincolnBachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics, Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics at East Tennessee State University
Github Skills (10)
unit-testing10
astropy10
pytest10
unit-test10
python10
scientific-computing10
numpy10
testing10
git8
code-documentation8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
astropy/astropy
Mar 2021 - Jan 2023
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:607 reviews, 336 commits, 233 PRs in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:William made significant contributions to the astropy/astropy project, specifically focusing on the `astropy.modeling` package. Their work involved fixing bugs related to handling multi-dimensional vectors and integer inputs within the models, particularly within the `core.py` and `rotations.py` files. They also added new tests to verify that the issues have been solved and updated the documentation for these changes, improving the robustness of the modeling package. They contributed to support for both the `convolve` and `convolve_fft` and improved and extended tests and functions.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
spacetelescope/jwst
Mar 2021 - Dec 2022
Python library for science observations from the James Webb Space Telescope
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & QA Engineer
Back-end Developer & QA EngineerContributions:28 reviews, 10 commits, 40 PRs in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:William contributed significantly to the `jwst` repository, primarily focused on fixing bugs and enhancing the existing codebase. They addressed test failures related to the `astropy` library, specifically within the `jwst/associations` module. The user also improved the `bounding_box` calculations for NIRSpec, and enabled the spectral order input in NIRISS SOSS mode. Furthermore, they worked on cleaning up files left behind after test executions, showcasing a focus on code quality and testing.
python-librarypythonsciencewebbjwst
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