Jad Nohra — Career Overview
Software engineer and engineering leader with 25+ years spanning physics simulation, game AI, autonomous vehicle safety, zero-knowledge cryptography, and FPGA hardware acceleration. 2 US patents and published research.
Career Timeline
- Irreducible (2024–25) — ZK Crypto / FPGA Hardware
- Three-mode architecture (emulated/verilated/FPGA) for ZK proof acceleration. XLang domain-specific compiler for VLIW FPGA cores — DAG computation graph, instruction scheduling, register allocation. ZK compute kernels (NTT, FRI fold). FPGA device management (VFIO, DMA, PCIe, IOMMU). Rust, Verilator, Xilinx FPGA.
- FERNRIDE (2023–24) — Autonomous Trucking
- Hazard Zone Model for autonomous truck safety — LiDAR/radar perception pipeline with zero false negatives. Articulated truck-trailer kinematic modeling. TÜV SÜD safety case certification. C++, ROS2.
- Argo AI (2021–22) — Autonomous Vehicles (Ford/VW)
- Statistical safety test design — Wilson score, binomial CI, Design of Experiments, stratified sampling. Scenario generation framework. Noise injection modeling library. 2 US patents. Python, SciPy.
- Audi AID (2018–20) — Autonomous Driving
- VTT multi-layer AV simulation platform — discrete-event scheduling, driver models (IDM/Wiedemann), vehicle dynamics, sensor simulation. Grew team from 2 to 20 engineers. C++, Python.
- Havok / Microsoft (2011–18) — Physics Engine
- Contact constraint solver rewrite shipped in all major games since ~2014. HoloLens spatial localization (US patent). High-fidelity MLCP solver R&D. Formal proof of TOI tunneling impossibility. WiiU math library. Numerical analysis, SIMD optimization. C++, Julia.
- Guerrilla Games / Sony (2009–11) — Game AI
- Killzone 3 AI systems — jetpack navigation, vehicle AI, automated navmesh region generation. PS3/SPU. C++.
- AiGameDev (2008–10) — AI Research
- AI Sandbox open-source framework. Co-authored "Parallel Pathfinding on Modern Hardware." HPA*, locomotion, reinforcement learning. C++.
- Kimera Studios (2006–08) — Indie Game Engine
- World-Of-Football: complete engine from scratch — rendering, physics, neural network goalkeeper AI, spatial partitioning, scripting. C++, DirectX.
Technical Domains
Physics simulation, game AI, graphics rendering, compiler design, zero-knowledge cryptography, FPGA hardware acceleration, autonomous vehicle safety, LiDAR/radar perception, numerical analysis, formal methods, statistics, AR/mixed reality, animation, concurrency.
Core Technologies
C++, Rust, Python, Julia, JavaScript, SIMD/SSE/AVX, FPGA (Xilinx/Verilator), ROS2, LiDAR, DirectX, OpenGL, PS3/SPU.
Side Projects (2025–26)
- vram.run — GPU/API model search across 19 providers, 220+ hardware configs
- Psychotron — Web Audio DSP chain for flash fiction audiobook
- ThatSlop — AI content detector browser extension
- ELIZA2 — Modern recreation of Weizenbaum's 1966 chatbot
- Learn Rust Course — Rust memory model for C++ programmers
Publications & Patents
