About Myself
Hi! My name is Daniel and I am a senior product Engineer at semvox, recently aquired by CARIAD. I finished my masters in Computer Science at University of Saarland, Saarbruecken in Oktober of 2020 with an average grade of 1.5. My thesis was about synthesis of KLTL specifications and supported by the Reactive Systems Group.
My Work Experiences
After graduation I started working as product Engineer at semvox. We develop a personalized smart assistant that is used by Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Skoda. My responsibilities early on included the development and maintaince of our internal prototype project that is used to analyze and demonstrate new featuresets before they are being brought into production. At the same time this project is used as our demonstrator, which is used to present the strength of our Software-Framework to new potential customers.
Additionally, I was the sole developer and maintainer of an internal test framework that is used to automate end to end tests in the Volkswagen-group project for semvox. This testframework mainly automates a variety of processes on automotive hardware prototypes, which are used internally to simulate a real-world car. The goal of this framework is to improve reliability of test results compared to manual testing and reduce the know-how that is required to work on the sensitive prototype hardware. Currently, around 40% of all in-car testing has been replaced with automated tests, performed by the testframework I developed, relieving a lot of pressure from the QA department.
I have since handed over this project to a new team inside the QA department that is able to focus all its effort into improving the framework further while I tackle new challenges. I am still involved in design-decisions and roadmap planning.
After my time developing the test framework, a significant portion of my time has been spent working towards a cyber security management system certification in form of ISO 21434 for semvox. I was mainly involved in establishing new processes to cover cyber security related subjects from the design phase, through the development cycle, until product releases and deployments. Analysing the impact of CVE findings in our product and determining the best mitigation path for those vulnerabilities is still part of my day to day work. I am responsible for the technical risk assessment and threat analysis for our software framework.
Another focus of mine has been the analysis of performence bottlenecks in in our automotive project with the Volkswagen-group. I was able to discover and implement crucial improvements to performance, memory management and overall system stability in the process.
At work I write almost exclusively Java code.
In the future I might update this website with content related to my work. However, right now the remaining sections on this page will remain mainly focused on stuff I have worked on during my studies.
My Computer Science Degree
My main interests at university were the fields of embedded systems and operating systems and verification of such systems. However, I intentionally visted a broad selection of courses at university to develop skills in a variety of fields.
I very much enjoy the ‘challenge’ of writing ‘low-level’ code. In my time as a student this usually resulted in me writing efficient Code in C. Recently I discovered Rust which sparked my interest a couple of times already in the past, mainly because of the strong guarantees (safe) rust code gives by design while getting reasonably close to C performance. This time I actually gave it a serious shot and so far I have been really happy with my decision.
In my free time, I like to keep myself in shape by exercising regularly at home - particularly my back is very thankful for those breaks after hours of sitting in a chair. I would consider myself very passionate about a wide variety of music and audio gear, which also helps me relax after a long day of working if im not reading a book on my Kindle. One of my favorite things to do after university is to optimize my workflow, for the tasks I am currently facing. This mainly ends up in me fine-tuning my zsh, tmux, vim or vscode configurations to solve some annoyance I encountered that day.
I used to be a quite unorganized and spontaneous person, but a couple of years ago I read about the principle of “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. Nowadays there is no way I leave the house without a way of putting down my thoughts (usually ends up being watch or phone) which helps me to organize and plan my week properly. This step forward had a significant impact not only on my overall enjoyment of working but also resulted in me being way more productive in the same amount of time.
The only hobby that still survived from my early childhood is gaming. I have never really enjoyed single-player games, but always had a great time playing PC games with my friends, which I occasionally still do. I like to keep up to date with some eSports as competitive gaming still is a passion of mine despite not having the time to pursue in that hobby myself anymore.
Somewhat recently I have found a new passion: cycling and striving for improvements in that sport.
During holidays I love traveling to new countries and discovering new places I haven’t been at before.