Amber Hawker
Software Lead for UBC Okanagan Marine Robotics, IT Specialist at CMIT Solutions, and a Dean's Scholar at UBCO. I design software and systems that have to work the first time, hold up under review, and keep running long after the demo is over.
amber@linux ~ $ cat about.md
I'm a software engineer working across autonomy, systems, and the infrastructure that holds them together. As Software Lead for UBC Okanagan Marine Robotics, I own the software for an autonomous underwater vehicle; as an IT Specialist at CMIT Solutions, I keep client systems and networks running in production.
Academically I'm a Dean's Scholar at UBC Okanagan carrying a 90% average, and I bring the same standard to engineering: code that survives review, systems that are tested before they're trusted, and documentation people can actually use.
# tl;dr high standards, dry humor, and a strong preference for fixing the cause over the symptom.
amber@linux ~ $ git log --oneline experience
Software Lead() @ UBC Okanagan Marine Robotics — RoboSub AUV
- Lead the software for an autonomous underwater vehicle: perception, control, and the autonomy stack that ties them together.
- Own the architecture and review the code, so the robot does what the mission planner says and not what the bug felt like doing.
- Coordinate a student engineering team and ship a vehicle that has to work the first time, underwater, with no second take.
IT Specialist() @ CMIT Solutions — Kelowna-Okanagan
- Keep client infrastructure running: systems, networks, and the inevitable fire that started before I arrived.
- Diagnose problems quickly and fix them properly, because a workaround is just a future incident with a calendar invite.
- Translate between what a system is actually doing and what a stakeholder thinks it should be doing.
amber@linux ~ $ bat stack.toml
# the stack, declared explicitly. no surprises in prod.
[infrastructure]
virtualization = ["Proxmox VE", "VM + LXC clusters"]
self_hosted = ["DNS", "reverse proxy", "media", "monitoring", "backups"]
reliability = ["HA", "automated backups", "actually-tested restores"]
[systems]
platform = ["Linux", "containers", "infrastructure-as-code"]
networking = ["VLANs", "firewalls", "routing"]
automation = ["shell", "IaC", "cron that I actually maintain"]
[engineering]
robotics = ["autonomy", "perception", "control systems"]
practice = ["code review", "testing", "documentation people read"]
bias = ["correctness > clever", "boring > fragile"]
amber@linux ~ $ cat education.json
{
"institution": "University of British Columbia, Okanagan",
"standing": "Dean's Scholar",
"average": 90, // percent. yes, really.
"focus": ["software", "systems", "robotics"]
}amber@linux ~ $ ./contact.sh
# Got a hard problem, a flaky cluster, or a robot that won't cooperate? I'm reachable for engineering, infrastructure, and robotics work.
echo "reach out and I'll get back to you."