Houston, TX

Nosson Cotlar

Senior Software Engineer

Backend systems engineer with a habit of rethinking things from first principles. I build platforms, modernize what's calcified, and occasionally lift buildings with a Raspberry Pi.

nossoncotlar@gmail.com GitHub LinkedIn

About

I'm a backend engineer at MacroFab, a cloud manufacturing platform for electronics. Started as an automation specialist and grew into a senior engineering role. The work has ranged from AI-powered quoting to design file pipelines to ripping out legacy systems that were held together with tape.

Born and raised in Houston. Spent some time in Pittsburgh, Australia, and Israel. Back here now, raising three kids and building things I care about.

I like the places where software meets physical things. A hydraulic jack controller on a Raspberry Pi, a generative art piece seeded by a hash. The interesting problems tend to live at the seams.

I try to leave every system cleaner, faster, and more understandable than I found it.

Location Houston, TX

Focus Backend systems, platform engineering, automation

Side interests Generative art, embedded electronics, physical computing

Email nossoncotlar@gmail.com

GitHub github.com/nossonCotlar

Work

MacroFab Inc.

Feb 2021 – Present

Automation Specialist → Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer

Cloud-based contract electronics manufacturing

— Rebuilt several legacy subsystems from scratch. 20× faster, plus much better observability and reliability
— Built an AI-powered quoting system with XGBoost and a custom neural net to predict manufacturing costs for new designs
— Overhauled the design file pipeline to pull manufacturing specs out of unstructured fabrication PDFs automatically
— Owned auth across a distributed microservices architecture
— Built internal tools and developer scripts that cut down day-to-day operational work
— Shipped customer-facing features end-to-end. Code reviews, design reviews, and generally being the person other teams come to with questions

PythonFlaskPerlMojoliciousTemporalAWSDockerMySQLPostgreSQLXGBoostOpenAPIBashJavaScript

Blue Goat Management LLC

2019 – 2021

System Administrator

Patient-physician pairing and medical records platform

— Designed the AWS infrastructure for a healthcare SaaS product
— Led a mixed team of frontend developers and backend technicians
— Kept infrastructure HIPAA-compliant

AWSCloudFormationDockerMicrosoft IISSQL ServerColdFusionApache

BrainCheck

2017 – 2018

QA Specialist

Cognitive assessment toolset for dementia and concussion diagnosis

— Built testing routines across the platform and the full assessment battery
— Mixed automated UI/API tests with large-scale Mechanical Turk crowd QA
— Filed detailed bug reports and worked with the dev team to triage and fix issues

PostmanSeleniumRainforestQATestFlight

Projects

Private client · Ongoing

Samson Lift

Wireless hydraulic jack system for lifting houses, roofs, and foundations. Runs on a Raspberry Pi managing relay arrays, pressure sensors, and linear encoders over I²C. Live telemetry and controls stream to a web frontend over WebSockets.

PythonWebSocketsRaspberry PiI²CLinux

Genart

Generative art API with multiple rendering engines. Give it a seed, get back reproducible artwork. Also has a Discord bot.

REST APIGenerative algorithmsDiscord bot

ShulScreen

Always-on info dashboard for synagogue lobbies. Designed to be readable across the room on a public screen.

p5.jsJavaScript

GRID4P

Processing library that connects Intech GRID controllers (physical knobs and faders) to generative art sketches. Tweak parameters live without leaving the code.

ProcessingJavaIntech GRID

VoteGoat

Real-time polling platform. Results show up instantly for all connected users, even under high concurrency.

RedisWebSocketsJavaScript

Luvnote

Collaborative drawing canvas for remote users. Shared state synced over WebSockets with a p5.js drawing layer.

p5.jsWebSocketsJavaScript

Weddyng

Wedding invitation and RSVP platform. Built it for my own wedding. Handles everything from sending invites to tracking attendance.

Web platform

Dr1ftP1nk

Costume helmet with a 40×40 LED matrix on the front running animated sequences. Battery powered, all self-contained, programmed in Arduino.

ArduinoLED matrixEmbedded C