Hi, I’m Zack.

About Me

My name is Zack Robinson. I write software (and occasionally words) to help people accomplish their goals, avoid tedium, and learn something new about the world we inhabit and the systems we use. I have a particular interest in human-computer interaction, embedded systems, efficient infrastructure, and cross-disciplinary integration.

Currently, I'm on the Infrastructure team at Arcesium. We provide advanced data, operations, and analytics software to the financial services industry.

I tend not to focus on specific languages, and can quickly learn new technologies and frameworks as needed. With that said, though, I’ve done non-trivial work in Python, Typescript, HTML/CSS/JS, Java, Kotlin, and OCaml, plus some exposure to Rust, C/C++, and Verilog. I’m familiar with deploying and running code in a variety of environments: from embedded systems, to on-premises physical servers, to managed Kubernetes clusters, to purely serverless cloud-based architectures.

I recently completed my BA in Computer Science (with minors in Engineering and English Literature) at Swarthmore College. During my time there, I was president of the Swarthmore College Computer Society, a 33-year-old chartered student organization with about 65 members.

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and now live in New York City. I used to be a student on FIRST® Robotics Competition Team 1540, and I’m still involved in the program through volunteering as a Control System Advisor and contributions to competition-specific libraries.

Projects and Past Work

In (roughly) reverse chronological order

• Arcesium: I'm currently a Software Engineer at Arcesium in New York City. During my internship there in summer 2023, I wrote a new web application for the Corporate Technology team that let over 1,000 developers self-manage their virtual workstations and decreased workstation-related developer queries by around 50%. I also wrote a cost analysis tool to break down over $1 million in annual AWS spending into an easy-to-understand report.
• SAUCE: I was the primary developer and maintainer of the SCCS Account and User Control Engine (or SAUCE), a new homepage, account management system, and CMS for the Swarthmore College Computer Society.
• Crumb Cafe: I was the project lead for a new point-of-sale and ordering system developed by SCCS for Swarthmore’s student-run late-night establishment.
• FPGA video processing: Together with Thomas Makin, I spent a semester trying to play video files off of an SD card using an FPGA. This was a lot more difficult than we expected, and we didn't end up anywhere close to getting it working. But we learned a lot about hardware development along the way, and also wrote a full report to help anyone who tries to do the same thing in the future.
• Slate: A flexible file-based productivity app for people with deadlines. Slate was my final project for CIS 4120: Intro to Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Pennsylvania (which I took through Swarthmore's cross-registration program). My group conducted user interviews, created low- and high-fidelity prototypes, and finally put everything together into a functional desktop app which reimagines file management with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can download it here. We also did a full process writeup.
• Polaris: I spent Summer 2022 as a System Administrator Intern at Polaris, one of the world’s leading powersports manufacturers. Using Ansible Playbooks and some PowerShell, I helped migrate several hundred legacy Windows virtual machines from an on-premises system to a cloud-based hosting provider. I also helped my intern team win the companywide “Innovation Challenge” by developing and presenting two new features for Polaris’s connected vehicle offerings.
• Streem: I spent Summer 2020 helping to make the world’s expertise more accessible as a Software Engineer Intern at Streem. I developed several Android utilities to generate test files and proofs-of-concept for a new video backend system, and worked on a new system for logging and metrics ingestion from WebRTC streams using Amazon Kinesis pipelines.
• FRC Team 1540: In high school, I was a very involved student on FIRST® Robotics Competition Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens. We built 150-pound industrial robots from the ground up in about six weeks. I wrote significant chunks of the control code for three competition robots, two of which won software awards.