Karl Newman
Lead Electrical Engineer at National Solar Observatory
Makawao, Hawaii, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolKarl Newman is a Lead Electrical Engineer with 18 years of cross-industry experience marrying controls, instrumentation, and software to deliver robust automation and integration solutions. He has led commissioning and functional safety efforts for large scientific installations like DKIST while also designing UL/CE-compliant electrical systems for high-temperature vacuum furnaces and thin-film optical coating processes. Skilled across PLC platforms (Allen-Bradley GuardLogix, Siemens, Modicon, etc.), SCADA/HMI stacks, and industrial communications, he excels at getting disparate hardware and software components to function as cohesive systems. Karl is equally comfortable writing PLC logic, tuning vacuum and gas dosing controls, or contributing backend fixes to open-source Java tooling like Osmosis to improve cross-platform usability. Based in Makawao, Hawaii, he combines hands-on field commissioning with careful documentation and a continuous-learning mindset that drives practical, safety-conscious innovation.
18 years of coding experience
25 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Mechanical Engineering at Walla Walla College
Github Skills (9)
openstreetmap10
javas10
batch10
script10
batchfile10
java10
multiplatform9
cross-platform9
xml8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
openstreetmap/osmosis
Jun 2008 - Aug 2008
Osmosis is a command line Java application for processing OSM data.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 commits in 2 months
Contributions summary:Karl primarily contributed to the Osmosis project by implementing and refining core functionality related to OSM data processing. Their work included creating a Windows batch file equivalent to existing shell scripts, indicating a focus on cross-platform compatibility and usability. Furthermore, they addressed bug fixes, corrected line endings, and updated XML constants, demonstrating a commitment to code quality and API consistency.
command-linejavaosm-data
openstreetmap/svn-archive
May 2008 - Aug 2008
Archived git conversion of svn.openstreetmap.org
Contributions:18 commits in 2 months
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