Karmanyaah Malhotra

Experience

Hardware Engineer Dec 2023 - Present

JCore Systems

PCB Design for Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, High Current Circuits, Ink Level Sensors using Altium
Make test fixtures, tester programs and factory procedures for PCB Quality Assurance
Interface sensors in Linux, design scripts to reliably deploy apps to edge computing devices

Network Admin/Teaching Assistant Aug 2022 - May 2023

Belton High School

Set up 15 Cisco switches and routers; Used VMWare to run Debian, Docker, and applications.
Developed a WebSocket-based WireGuard VPN-wrapper in Golang to improve accessibility of resources beyond my school's firewall
Trained 9th graders with IT skills like rack mounting, making Ethernet cables, SSH, RDP, AD.

ChessBot - Robot Lead February 2024 - Present

Demobots | UT IEEE RAS

Design an economical magnetometer sensor grid to measure 64 points of magnetic flux over 1600 sq cm
Create a Raspberry Pi Hat with motor drivers powered by USB Power Delivery and compact status displays
Design an MQTT-based distributed software architecture for sensor processing, actuator control, and data playback across nodes

Robotics Software Developer August 2023 - Present

VEXU Team GHOST | UT IEEE RAS ras.ece.utexas.edu/2024/09/05/Vexu

Design autonomous trajectories and human-robot controller interfaces, do localization based on Odometry
Install camera-based object detection software on Linux and publish data to Robot Operating System (ROS)
Solve many hardware on Linux deployment problems and automate team workflow

OnBoard Ambassador June 2023 - July 2024

Hack Club jams.hackclub.com/batch/sparkletilt-pcb

Wrote a PCB design workshop that guided many students through their first PCB design and manufacturing process; provided support, ideas, and design verification to advanced students.
Make cool demo PCBs and schematic modules to encourage participation like a Musical Keyboard and LED Level

Full-Stack Developer and Community Manager Dec 2020 - Dec 2022

UnifiedPush k.malhotra.cc/portfolio/#unifiedpush

Designed server-to-server API specs and built protocol conversion servers, handling 100K+ daily messages across thousands of users; developed client libraries supporting 10+ apps
Collaborated with OSS like Gotify, Ntfy, and patched libraries/servers (e.g., Caddy) to improve performance
Wrote extensive documentation and provided community support for self-hosting servers
Experimented with new components like a WebPush decryption library (Dart) and DBus-based client (Go, C)
Managed social media outreach, growing to 1,000+ followers

Team Lead 2022-23

Vex Robotics Competition High School

Architected a complex C++ program for coordinating subsystems in a real-time operating system
Analyzed camera inputs, gyroscopes, motor encoders, distance, and color sensors to extract useful information; Implemented autonomy algorithms to correct robot behavior.
Guided younger students with no previous robotics experience to be competition-ready through coding and mechanical design practice

BisonHackers 2019-2022

Offensive security (CTF) Team High School

Highly ranked in red team competitions like CSAW RED (NYU), picoCTF (CMU), BCACTF and more
Learned about Binary Exploitation, Network Security, Assembly, Web Browser security, and more

C-AAM Turret Blaster Robot October 2023

HackTX Hackathon - 1st Place k.malhotra.cc/projects/2023/10/hacktx

Brought together a team that designed a 2-axis turret blaster to shoot aggie maroon objects using computer vision in 24 hours
Interfaced a laptop running OpenCV with an Arduino controlling stepper motors
Used a software defined radio (SDR) to receive audio from a handheld radio, transcribe voice to text, and decide whether to activate the turret

Longhorn LED Level PCB k.malhotra.cc/projects/2023/09/sparkletilt

Designed an ATmega328P-based, Arduino-compatible dev board, with inputs (accelerometer), outputs (Addressable LEDs), Li-ion charging, USB

Hot Dog - A Programmable Flamethrower July 2023

Outernet Hackathon - Hack Club k.malhotra.cc/projects/2023/09/hotdog

Rapidly prototyped and developed a pyrotechnic toy in 42 hours from ideation to demo
Collaborated with a team of 5 under time pressure to test various fuel dispensing mechanisms, user inputs, ignition, controls, and backup plans
Built and coded a safe, Arduino-controlled, battery powered, motor driver and HVAC source

Discord - GroupMe Chat bridge github.com/karmanyaahm/groupme_discord_bridge_v3

Syncs messages between various data sources while appearing native to the platform
Reliably operating for over 2 years on a Debian server with no maintenance