Dirk Kaar
Embedded Software Engineer at Samson KT-Elektronik
Berlin, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDirk Kaar is an embedded software engineer with 10+ years of experience building low-level firmware and IoT solutions from Berlin, backed by a Diplom in Computer Science. He has a long track record contributing to high-profile open-source ESP cores (arduino-esp32 and esp8266/Arduino), where he focused on ISR-safe optimizations, hardware support, timing fixes, and memory-efficiency improvements. Dirk’s work spans timer and serial subsystems, waveform generation, and portability efforts—practical expertise that reduces latency and improves reliability in resource-constrained devices. Currently at Samson KT-Elektronik, he applies deep embedded systems knowledge to commercial products while maintaining community-driven improvements to widely used microcontroller toolchains. Colleagues value him for pragmatic low-level problem-solving and for bridging legacy embedded constraints with modern hardware features.
10 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Diplom-Informatiker (FH), Computer Science, Diplom-Informatiker (FH), Computer Science at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin (formerly Technische Fachhochschule Berlin)
Github Skills (23)
timers10
c-language10
hardware-interface10
memory-management10
interrupt-handling10
timer10
time-management10
real-time-systems10
esp826610
iot10
interrupt10
sys10
esp3210
esp-idf10
embedded10
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
plerup/espsoftwareserial
Feb 2018 - Dec 2022
Implementation of the Arduino software serial for ESP8266
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:108 releases, 7 reviews, 400 commits in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Dirk primarily worked on improving the ESP8266-based software serial library. Their contributions focused on optimizing the timing and performance of the library, including fixing timing errors, and optimizing for use in full-duplex applications. They also added support for selecting different word sizes, and enhanced the internal structure of the library with more fine-grained interrupt control for improved performance. Their work included testing in the loopback and repeater modes.
arduinoesp8266
esp8266/Arduino
Aug 2019 - Dec 2022
ESP8266 core for Arduino
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:75 reviews, 106 commits, 158 PRs in 3 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Dirk primarily contributed to the core functionality of the ESP8266 Arduino core. Their work focused on improving the efficiency and stability of the core, including optimizations in low-level system operations, such as the timer, hardware serial communication, and memory management. Significant contributions included implementing waveform generation, improving scheduling for recurrent functions, and memory usage optimization. Further contributions involved porting features from other ESP32 arduino projects.
arduinoesp8266
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