About
Hi, I'm Raka Gunarto, a software engineer. I have been interested in computers since I was barely conscious (10 years old?). The earliest recollection of my curiosity was looking at the magic box that showed things on a monitor. Not much later, I asked my dad about Excel macros while he was working on a spreadsheet. From there, I began my deep dive into the world of software, and I've only scratched the surface of what there is to explore.
I frequently create things in my spare time, many of which can be found on my GitHub
What I Do
I'm currently in my early career as a software engineer. I love learning new things, and finding new people to learn new things from.
My current role is at EnQuest, where I work as a software engineer within an operations focused organisation. In practice, this means taking end-to-end ownership of internal engineering work. I work on various projects which ranges from building AI assisted search with their data to experimenting with machine learning to assist in their operations.
More broadly, I enjoy working on (positively) impactful wide-reaching projects alongside a high-performing team. I want to work alongside truly passionate people who care about doing things right and continuous improvement.
Background
I studied an MEng in Computer Science at the University of Leeds, where I graduated with a first. Alongside the formal curriculum, I took opportunities to go further than the syllabus in topics that interested me. Notably, I took a deep interest in the operating systems module, where I implemented a subset of mmap in xv6 to share memory pages, and later on wrote a toy graphics driver for xv6 for my BSc project. I also took an interest in graphics programming, where I spent a winter break writing a mini game engine for an assignment.
In addition to the academics, I loved helping my peers and sharing my knowledge, spending my time in labs helping other students and later becoming a teaching assistant. I was awarded the BIT94 prize in computing, which is "awarded to the student who does most to foster good interaction of either an academic or social nature between staff and students in the School of Computing".
Before and during university, I worked on a mix of personal projects, hackathons, and part-time roles, which eventually led to an internship and then a full-time role at Microsoft, working on telecoms infrastructure in the cloud.
Since then, I’ve focused on learning from strong engineering cultures and working alongside the best minds in the field.
Interests
If you were to ask me my top three areas of interest, it would be:
- Low-level (OS kernels, drivers, etc.)
- Large-scale distributed systems (reliability, fault tolerance, and real-world scaling)
- Graphics programming (OpenGL, Vulkan, etc)
I am also very fond of open source, which I believe truly embodies the values I hold dear: the desire to create great things and share it for all. The linux kernel project is something I have great respect for, it runs a majority of the systems in the world, and many contributors are just passionate people with spare time.
People in general that care deeply about their craft, software or something else entirely, also interest me.
Connect
Cat
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