Ryan Ward

About Me

I am a passionate software/electronics/computer engineer. I have a formal education in electrical and computer engineering, however, most of my professional experience has consisted of writing firmware, software and gateware for a variety of applications. I am passionate about distributed systems, embedded programming, electronics, and wherever software interacts with hardware.

In addition to writing software, I have been involved with a lot of hardware verification and testing, including bringing up new PCBs, porting firmware drivers to new platforms and architectures, and debugging RF circuits. I have a strong understanding of embedded programming, integrated circuit operation, high-speed data protocols, radio frequency design & implementation, and design processes for complex projects, both in the software and hardware domain.

Outside of work hours, I spend my time working on some fun side projects, and I will try to start writing about interesting topics in my blog. I enjoy working on projects that improve my knowledge and skillset, examples include booting Linux on a softcore RISC-V processor, experimenting around with my HackRF PortaPack, learning Zig, writing a low-level operating system, the list goes on.

I love computers and their history - humanity’s progression from vacuum tubes to RTX 4090’s will always be something that fascinates me. Discovering historical and influential figures in the computing world is something I enjoy, and I admire the likes of Ritchie, Thompson, Knuth, Lattner, Stallman, Torvalds and Hotz to name a few.

Experience

• Praetorian Aeronautics (2025 - current)
  • Architecting and implementing a distributed command & control system for autonomous effectors
  • Designing a onboard cross-language C2 layer connecting advanced computer vision algorithms to flight controller firmware
  • Developing a sub-millisecond operator “action-to-launch” pipeline
  • Utilising asynchronous Rust and NixOS
  • Hardware integration of many avionics and sensor components
  • Debugging flight controller firmware on an STM32 platform
  • Developed a multi-agent reinforcement learning simulation animation frontend
  • Configuring and maintaining company-wide development infrastructure including:
    • Gitlab server
    • CI/CD Runners
    • Internal documentation (mdbook)
    • Cloudflare WARP routing
    • Other internal tooling

• Boeing Defence Australia (2023 - 2025)
  • Implemented firmware on STM32 targets on a FreeRTOS platform
  • Wrote and integrated custom IC drivers, increasing usability for internal customers
  • Embedded Linux development and configuration using Yocto and Buildroot
  • Collaborated with teams of engineers across domains to deliver projects on schedule
  • Debugging firmware and hardware
  • PCBA/CCA verification
  • Custom IP core development in VHDL
  • HDL development targeting the Zynq7000 SoC using Vivado/Vitis
  • Unit testbench development
  • Debugging RF hardware and gateware
  • C standard library testing

• University of Queensland (2022 - 2023)
  • Developed a decentralised application for event ticketing
  • Co-authoured a research article published by Springer in the book Blockchain and Smart Contract Technologies for Innovative Applications
  • Designed and implemented a proof of concept ticketing system, deployed on an Ethereum testnet
  • The application won the award “Best Blockchain Project” at the UQ Innovation Showcase in 2022

• Various Startups (2021 - 2022)
  • Casual software development

Skills

• Languages: C, Rust, Python, VHDL, C++, RISC-V & AArch64 assembly, Matlab, Tcl, Zig, Verilog
• Development Tools: Git, GDB, Clippy, Vivado, Vitis, Yosys suite
• Platforms & Frameworks: Tokio, ZMQ, Yocto, Buildroot, Zephyr, FreeRTOS
• Hardware: STM32 microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi Pico, ESP32, Lattice FPGAs (ECP5), Nvidia Jetson Orin NX, Xilinx FPGAs (Zynq7000, Zynq Ultrascale), various RF integrated circuits
• Test equipment: Oscilloscopes, Vector Network Analysers, Spectrum Analysers, Frequency Counters, PassMark
• Protocols: SPI, IIC, I2S, USB (2 & 3), USB-PD, DDR

Education

I hold a Bachelor’s (Honours) and Master’s degree of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Projects

Zip RTOS

In an effort to keep up with the times, I wanted to learn the Zig programming language in a freestanding context. What better way than to try and write a simple baremetal RTOS? The project is hosted on GitHub, and still needs a lot of work.

So far, I have written a super basic task scheduler that will round-robin schedule an arbitrary number of tasks. I have spent most of my time understanding the RISC-V architecture and how different operating systems implement their context switching mechanisms rather than actually writing and learning Zig :D

Pico Mesh

A LoRa based mesh network that allows Raspberry Pi Pico modules to communicate with one another. Built on top of Zephyr RTOS, running on the RP2040 with a Semtech SX1276 LoRa module and a ST7789 OLED display.

Open Source Contributions

I have contributed to a few OSS projects, notable ones being the Rust compiler and their linting tool Clippy, the FreeRTOS-Kernel, and the STM32 USB-PD Core driver. I would love to fill this section out more in my spare time.

Shout-out

Huge thanks to Oskar Wickström for their article and template of which this website is built from. The source code for this website, and my blog, can be found on my GitHub.