Paul Shirkey

Paul Shirkey has held a variety of roles in the software industry since 1992. Paul began their career as a Summer Intern at Apple in 1992. In 1997, they took on the role of Systems Engineer at IPEC Planar. In 1998, they were a Senior Software Engineer at Etec Systems, which was later acquired by Applied Materials. From 2001 to 2004, they were the Owner of Sharp End Software, where they developed 3D mapping software using freely available 7.5 minute USGS data sets with OpenGL and C++. From 2004 to 2007, they were a Senior Software Engineer at Lucidyne Technologies, where they developed high speed, real time, software in C++ for the geometric modeling of dimensional lumber. From 2007 to 2009, they were a Senior Software Engineer and VP of Engineering at RR Software, where they developed solutions for spreadsheet risk assessment and automated error detection. From 2009 to 2012, they were the CTO of CenterSpace Software, where they conducted research and software development of multi-core scalable numerical routines for optimization, signal processing, and statistics running on heterogeneous GPU/CPU computing hardware. Paul also consulted companies around the world ranging from fortune 500 corporations to early stage Silicon Valley start ups. From 2012 to present, they have been an Itinerate Traveler, and from 2000 to 2001, they were an Itinerate Traveler and Volunteer in Central and South America, working in a rural Honduran medical clinic on the central mosquito coast.

Paul Shirkey obtained a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Oregon State University between 1986 and 1991. Paul then went on to earn an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign between 1992 and 1995.