Firmware engineer · Alicante, Spain

Juan Luis Leal

Firmware for flight systems that cannot fail: I work at Embention on the autopilot of the Amazon Prime Air project. Outside work I build in Rust, with three published crates.

Portrait of Juan Luis Leal

About

Electronics engineer by training (UMH, 2016 to 2020). I come from hardware: four years of R&D at CETEM designing PCBs and writing ESP32 firmware, with five Springer papers along the way, two as first author.

Since September 2024 I have been a firmware engineer at Embention, on the autopilot of the Amazon Prime Air project. In parallel, Rust has become my main personal language: three published crates and Android apps built on a Rust core.

How I work with AI

I code with AI tools daily, under the same process I apply at work: linting, tests, coverage and review on every change. The public pieces of that workflow are lockpick and rust-template, in the projects below.

Languages
Rust · C++ (embedded, JSF) · Python
Embedded
ESP32 · ESP-IDF · FreeRTOS · Cyphal · STANAG · CAN · GNSS
PCB
Altium · KiCad
Process
HIL/SIL simulation · requirements and traceability · CI/CD · quality gates
AI tooling
Claude Code · lockpick · rust-template
Systems
Linux · TrueNAS/ZFS · VLANs · WireGuard

Experience

  1. Since Sep 2024 Alicante, Spain

    Firmware Engineer Embention

    Autopilot and avionics company for UAVs and eVTOL. I work full time on the autopilot of the Amazon Prime Air delivery drone project, where Embention is a technology partner.

    • Embedded C++ under the JSF standard for flight-critical systems.
    • HIL and SIL simulation, requirements and traceability.
    • Aerospace protocols and GNSS: Cyphal, STANAG, CAN.
    • Day-to-day work in a codebase shared with around 100 engineers.
    • On-site support in Seattle, USA, as an Embention engineer for the Amazon Prime Air team.
  2. Mar 2021 · Aug 2024 Yecla, Spain

    R&D Engineer · Electronics and firmware CETEM

    Applied research center. Electronics and firmware for more than ten national and European R&D projects, including the EU project Pharaon.

    • Designed from scratch the complete electronics of the sensorized version of the Proteckthor head protection band: circuit, schematic, miniaturized PCB in Altium, Espressif MCU, firmware and testing (prototype).
    • ESP32 firmware with ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS: BLE, Wi-Fi, OTA updates, low power.
    • Five Springer papers came out of this work, two as first author, plus technical talks in English at international conferences.
    • Open source fixes merged upstream: arduino-esp32 and pysolar.
  3. Sep 2019 · Jul 2020 Elche, Spain

    Research collaboration grant Universidad Miguel Hernández

    • Atmospheric data analysis in R: satellite aerosol data and Saharan dust intrusions over the Iberian Peninsula.
  4. Summer 2017 Alicante, Spain

    Intern · Mechanical design Entre2mares

    • Designed the full structure of their underwater wine cellar in Autodesk Inventor, for a company that ages wine under the sea.

Projects

Personal projects, most of them in Rust. Public repos are linked.

helioxide

Published on crates.io

Rust · crate · astronomy

The NREL Solar Position Algorithm in Rust, the engine behind solar-clock. Each doc comment cites the equation of the paper it implements and the tests pin values from the paper’s own tables. CI on three operating systems with a 100% branch coverage gate.

solar-clock

In development · private repo

Rust · Android · UniFFI

Solar clock for Android. Instead of civil time it shows time anchored to the real Sun: sunrise, solar noon, sunset and nadir, continuous through DST changes and polar regimes. All the math lives in a Rust core exposed through UniFFI.

lockpick

Published on crates.io

Rust · crate · CLI

All the quality gates of a Rust project in one command: fmt, clippy, tests, doc, coverage, machete, audit. It is the CI gate of all my Rust repos and it parallelizes the checks that do not compete for the build lock.

andlock

Published on crates.io

Rust · crate · combinatorics

Counts Android-style unlock patterns on n-dimensional grids of up to 127 points. It doubles as the verification oracle for the closed-form formulas and the exponential generating function I derived on paper.

PLC-ESPLoRa

Degree project · open source

C++ · ESP32 · LoRa

My 2020 degree project, published open access and open source: an 8-relay PLC programmable from the browser, running on two ESP32 nodes linked by LoRa. The remote node keeps executing its stored program even if the radio link drops.

Tools and templates

Publications

Five peer-reviewed papers in Springer international conference proceedings, from my research years at CETEM. Two as first author.

  1. 2024 UCAmI 2024 · Springer First author

    Two-Coil Resonant Wireless Power Transfer System for Smart Recycling Containers

    doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77571-0_59
  2. 2024 UCAmI 2024 · Springer

    e2Drive: Enhancing Urban Mobility and Safety for Physically Disabled Drivers Through Smart Sensor System

    doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77571-0_53
  3. 2024 ForItAAL 2024 · Springer

    AmICare: Ambient Intelligent and Assistive System for Caregivers Support

    doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77318-1_31
  4. 2022 UCAmI 2022 · Springer LNNS 594 First author

    Ambient Monitoring System for Contagion Risk Assessment of Airborne Transmission Diseases in the Hospitality Industry

    doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21333-5_70
  5. 2022 UCAmI 2022 · Springer LNNS 594

    A Predictive Waste Collection Management System: IoT Device for Smart Containers and System Architecture

    doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21333-5_60
2020 Degree thesis · UMH

PLC para control de bombas de piscina y sistemas de riego automático en chalés

UMH, 2020. Open access in the university repository, released as open source.

dspace.umh.es

Education

2016 · 2020 Universidad Miguel Hernández

Degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering

GPA 8.2/10, with the top mark (Matrícula de Honor) in six courses. Degree project graded 10/10, published open access and open source.

Courses

  • Altium Designer + Advanced · Electratraining, 2022
  • Public speaking, argumentation and rhetoric · UIMP, 2024

Languages

  • Spanish · native
  • English · daily working language with a US team (B2 Cambridge)
  • Valencian · C1 certified (2024)

Contact