Karl Hill
Staff Aerospace Software Engineer
Staff Aerospace Software Engineer. Hands-on technical leadership across national security, aerospace, and NASA software — distributed systems, architecture, platform engineering, and the path a change takes to production.
2025–present
Staff Aerospace Software Engineer at Jacobs National Security. Mission software, platform engineering, and cross-program technical leadership, including cross-team SAFe Agile. Core program: roughly 12 Python repositories, four environments, and about 6 engineers.
Mission software case study2017–2025
Lead Software Engineer with SSAI. Public Earth science systems for flood mapping, satellite-data access, and science publishing.
Flood Mapping SystemSelected engineering
Mission software is the current work. The public proof is a NASA flood-mapping system and The Dry Standard, an application I design and operate, plus the tools I maintain in the open.
All workCross-program technical direction, shared interfaces, DevSecOps, integration, and engineer development.
Core program: ~12 repositories · 4 environments · ~6 engineers
Cross-team SAFe Agile. Core-program scale; broader influence is shared practices and coordination across additional aerospace efforts.
Led Python processing and containerized delivery on AWS, connecting imagery to a public map.
90.9% overall accuracy in the published system evaluation
Collaborative scientific result, not an individual engineering KPI. Software (Equal), GeoHorizons 2026.
Built focused tools for local CI, prioritizing test gaps, and pipeline governance.
Inspect the source, tests, and usage documentation
Independently authored and maintained; public source is the evidence.
Technical scope
Python services, shared interfaces, and integration across repositories and environments. Messaging stays behind a common contract so broker choice is configuration.
Hands-on delivery in high-assurance settings: review, testing, and release practices that have to hold across teams. Program detail stays unpublished.
Interface design, repository standards, and the engineering system around the application: CI, review, and the checks that travel with the change.
NASA delivery on AWS and Kubernetes, including GitLab CI for public satellite-data access, alongside mission-software environments.
Pipelines, coverage, type checks, and security gates as the baseline for a change, not a separate process after the fact.
Architecture decisions, engineering standards, review, and development of engineers who are shipping the same work. Personnel authority stays with management.
Engineering leadership
Direction stays close to the code: architecture, standards, and the path a change takes to production.
See the delivery systemShared interfaces and integration choices made in review, while the change is still cheap to correct.
Tests, coverage, type checks, and security gates that apply across repositories instead of living in a document.
Sequencing work across teams, and coaching engineers through the same review that ships the code.
Engineering notes
Engineering systems, technical leadership, and what changes when delivery is treated as part of the product.
About Karl