Josh Whitley has joined the Autoware Foundation as our first dedicated contract engineer in the position of Software Architect. Josh is taking over the responsibility for guiding the design and implementation of the software projects run by the Foundation, beginning with Autoware.AI and Autoware.Auto. He is also fulfilling some maintainer duties for these projects. Josh joins the Foundation at an important point in time. Development of the next generation of Autoware, i.e. “Autoware.Auto”, is accelerating rapidly with the recent push to achieve its first technology milestone, Autonomous Valet Parking. This is in no small part due to Josh’s work shepherding over a dozen regular contributors from the Autoware Foundation member companies and beyond, a task most commonly described as more difficult than herding cats. With the increasing workload of managing contributions and keeping all development work aligned towards a single goal, Josh will be a vital member of the Autoware community.

Josh has worked in the technology sector for over 20 years including his most recent position as the Senior Innovation Engineer in Software Systems at AutonomouStuff. He has been an active contributor to open-source for many years, which is where he learned about Autoware.AI. In his job at AutonomouStuff, he acted as one of the primary maintainers for that project. At the Autoware Foundation, he hopes to expand the reputation of both the Autoware.AI and Autoware.Auto projects until they are the go-to open-source platforms for the entire autonomous driving industry. In his spare time, he enjoys working on embedded electronics and 3D printing. He lives and works at his home in Illinois in the United States with his fiance Kathy, their 4 dogs, 5 geckos, and 34 snakes.

The Autoware Foundation’s special thanks go to AutonomouStuff – Josh is a former OSS architect at AutonomouStuff and they offered us this opportunity so that we can step forward to make further success with the Autoware Foundation. AutonomouStuff is a founding member of the Autoware Foundation. We appreciate their continuous presence and so far their contribution has been more than significant for us. Let’s enable the future of mobility with open source together.

Shinpei Kato

Chairman of the Board of the Autoware Foundation