Aerospace Engineer and Computer Scientist with over a decade of professional and hobbyist software engineering experience in astrodynamics, numerical programming, quantum computing, machine learning and data analytics, embedded and real-time operating systems, and full-stack web development.
Native speaker of English and Portuguese; intermediate (approx. N2) in Japanese.
JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency)
Research Student — Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)
Master's student in the Tsuda Laboratory (previously Kawaguchi Lab) at Japan's national space agency in Tokyo. Research and development of next-generation astrodynamics software, OrbitalTrajectories.jl (available on GitHub), a modern space mission trajectory design library making contributions in differential systems modelling to the Julia programming language's open-source ecosystem.
Research Intern — Institute of Aeronautical Technology
Previously a research intern in the Flight Research Center at Chofu Aerospace Center, Tokyo. Developed and evaluated a C++ reinforcement-learned flight control system for motion-tracked micro-aerial vehicles.
Rigetti Computing
Systems & Software Engineer
Research software engineer in a newly formed applications team at an eminent quantum computing hardware company, joining as part of an acquisition of quantum software start-up QxBranch.
- Architected and developed a high-performance GPU- and cloud-based simulation platform for applications in quantum adiabatic Boltzmann sampling and non-linear optimisation.
- Developed novel quantum algorithms and prototypes, including for tomographic approximation of quantum states, and for reinforcement learning using quantum Boltzmann machines.
- Led the company's business strategy and partner engagements in Japan.
QxBranch
Systems & Software Engineer
Software engineer for a quantum computing start-up, developing classical and quantum machine learning applications for investment banks, hedge funds, and logistics clients. Involved in various roles including in the design of engineering processes, client proposals and engagement, and project management.
- Led a team of software engineers to develop an educational platform for adiabatic and universal quantum computing technologies aimed at developers, researchers, and engineers. Architected and deployed the distributed microservices-based platform for clients on AWS and Google Cloud.
- Led a team of data analysts to develop a predictive machine learning model for FX trade for a major multinational bank. Designed a front-end analytics interface later utilised by an ML spin-off company.
- Developed software tools for quantum computing application development, including: an enterprise-grade high-performance gate model simulator, a symbolic application prototyping library, and a quantum-hybrid machine learning regularisation scheme compatible with the scikit-learn ecosystem.
- Key role in the architectural design, development, and DevOps of an auto-scaling cloud-based platform for hardware-agnostic execution of quantum programs on simulators and device backends.
- Led technical client engagements to research and develop hybrid classical-quantum applications in FX market making and pricing, marketing and advertising, and portfolio rebalancing.
- Designed and delivered on-site training programs, applications workshops, and presentations to scientists, engineers, and executives at multinational corporations, universities, quantum and high-performance computing conferences, government policy roundtables, and industry trade shows.
Shoal Engineering
Research Engineering Intern
Involved in the establishment of a software research and development services spin-off company, QxBranch, including technical engagement of clients and stakeholders, design of engineering processes and quality management systems, and R&D work on software prototypes.
- Lead researcher for a world-first commercial quantum computing collaboration led by Lockheed Martin, analysing the properties and relevant applications of NP-Hard problems on a D-Wave Two adiabatic quantum optimiser, used to brief the new CTO of Lockheed Martin.
- Key role in establishing the engineering processes and quality management systems for a commercially successful quantum software and applications spin-off company.
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Teaching Assistant — School of Computer Science
Taught software development classes and assessed over 120 undergraduate students in C, Perl, Python, Linux systems and tools, algorithmic design, and principles of software engineering.
Engineering Student Ambassador — Faculty of Engineering
Official representative of the UNSW Faculty of Engineering at various engineering outreach programs involving interaction with public, media, high school and primary school students.
NICTA (now Data61 @ CSIRO)
Research Engineer — Software Systems Research Group (SSRG)
R&D software engineer in Embedded Real-Time Operating Systems (ERTOS) at Australia's national research institute for information and communications technology.
- Designed and developed the first practical operating system built on the seL4 formally verified microkernel, including a custom-designed and manually manufactured RFID card reader (PCB design with Altium Designer) and development of a complete embedded operating system from scratch (OMAP3 architecture on Gumstix/BeagleBoard).
- Extensive use of C in operating system design, including development of custom device drivers (e.g. SPI/GPIO bus drivers), frame buffer libraries, threading, and simple networking capabilities.
- Full-stack Python-based web development and Linux system administration for the Software Systems Research Group website and internal servers and tools.
University of Tokyo (東京大学大学院)2019 — 2021
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Master of Aerospace Engineering (工学系研究科航空宇宙工学専攻 修士課程)
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University of New South Wales (UNSW)2010 — 2014
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Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Aerospace) — First Class Honours (GPA 4.0/4.0) Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) — High Distinction (First Class)
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University of Michigan, Ann ArborFall 2013
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Aerospace Engineering (Student Exchange, Senior Year) — GPA 3.44/4.00
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衛星設計コンテスト アイデア大賞 + 日本天文学会賞 — Satellite Design Contest Idea Grand Prize
エプソン国際奨学財団の奨学生 — Seiko Epson Corporation International Scholarship
文部科学省外国人留学生学習奨励費 — JASSO Monbukagakusho Honors Scholarship
UNSW Engineering Dean's Honours List (multiple years)
UNSW Student Exchange Scholarship
RoboCup SPL Technical Challenge — 3rd place (for Reinforcement-learned Bipedal Stabilisation)
UNSW CSE Undergraduate Performance Award
UNSW Programming Competition Scholarship
Padilha, Composable Astrodynamics Software via Multiple Dispatch and Meta-Programming, Master's Thesis, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
Padilha, Designing Spacecraft Trajectories with Julia, presentation, JuliaCon 2021.
Padilha, Dei Tos, Baresi & Kawaguchi, Modern Numerical Programming with Julia for Astrodynamic Trajectory Design, 31st AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting, Charlotte, NC, USA.
Kalev, Paini, Padilha & Ruck, Estimating expectation values using approximate quantum states, Quantum 5, 413 (2021).
Padilha, Designing a Programming Toolkit for Ballistic Capture and Station-Keeping, presentation, 30th Workshop on JAXA Astrodynamics and Flight Mechanics.
Padilha, Weinstock & Hodson, QxSQA: GPGPU-Accelerated Simulated Quantum Annealer within a Non-Linear Optimization and Boltzmann Sampling Framework, 2019 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC), Waltham, MA, USA.
Padilha, Training L0-regularised Linear Regression and Classification Models with a Quantum Annealer, presentation, Sixth Conference in Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC 2017), Tokyo, Japan.
Hodson, Fletcher, Padilha & Cook, Rapid Prototyping with Symbolic Computation: Fast Development of Quantum Annealing Solutions, 2016 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC), Waltham, MA, USA.
Padilha & Wilson, Taking a Systems Engineering Approach to Quantum Computing Software, invited presentation, DSTG Quantum Technology in an Australian Context Symposium, Canberra, Australia.
Hodson, Zick, Jones & Padilha, A Novel Embedding Technique for Optimization Problems of Fully-Connected Integer Variables, Fourth Conference in Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC 2015), Zurich, Switzerland.
Padilha, Solving NP-Hard Problems on an Adiabatic Quantum Computer, Thesis, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Padilha, Butt, Tisato & Wilson, The Australian approach to Ground Population Modelling and Risk Management; Creation of Debris Catalogs using Fractal Fragmentation; Determining Appropriate Failure Response Mode Probabilities for High-altitude Sounding Rockets, 4th IAASS Workshop on Launch & Re-Entry Safety, NASA Wallops, VA, USA.
UNSW School of Computer Science — peer mentor, events organiser and leader
Australian Space Development Conference — conference volunteer
Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix — Scrutineer, Pit Lane Marshal, Track Marshal, Flag Marshal
Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) — website administrator (Australian division)
Young Scientists of Australia — volunteer for science school events
UNSW CSE Revue / UNSW Medical Revue — organising committee
AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) + Cloud Practitioner (CLF) — Amazon Web Services
Systems Engineering Fast Track — University of Oxford
DO-178C/ED-12C — Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment
Significant experience with modern software engineering and development, including:
- High-level scientific computing (Julia, Python, MATLAB)
- High-performance object-oriented programming (C++, Java)
- Scripting (Perl, Ruby, Bash)
- Functional programming (Haskell)
- Low-level embedded computing (C, VHDL)
- Databases (SQL, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite)
- Full-stack web design (Flask, Django, PHP, HTML/CSS, jQuery, Apache, nginx)
- System/server administration (Linux, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL/Fedora)
- Version control & code reviews/pull requests (Git, SVN, hg, Bitbucket, Github)
- Continuous integration (CircleCI, Github Actions)
- DevOps (Docker, Vagrant, Ansible, Terraform)
- Cloud computing (AWS, Google Cloud Platform)
- Agile processes & tools (JIRA)
- Systems engineering (Enterprise Architect, UML)
Experience in software design and application development using quantum computer hardware/software:
- D-Wave 2 / 2X / 2000Q
- Rigetti Aspen-7
- Forest/pyQuil, SAPI, Cirq, QISKit
Experience with 2D and 3D CAD, numerical computing, PCB design, CFD, and FEA:
- MATLAB
- Altium Designer
- Solidworks
- ANSYS CFX
- Patran/Nastran