Brahim Redouane Mellah

2024 — Present

Senior Software Developer Zebra Technologies

Owning algorithms other people ship on

One of the engineers responsible for the library’s algorithms. The work runs past the code: agreeing behaviour with the UI, documentation and test teams before it ships, and going into the applications customers cannot get working.

Inspection that runs on the camera

Moving the imaging library onto the camera itself, so inspection runs on the device rather than on a PC wired to it.

Built

Aurora Imaging Library · Aurora Focus smart camera

Stack

C++ · machine vision algorithms · embedded / edge imaging

Tools

Visual Studio · Git / GitHub · JIRA

Learned

A library is a product only when the algorithm, the documentation and the tests agree — and the disagreements surface in a customer’s application long before they surface in a test suite.

2022 — 2024

Software Developer II Zebra Technologies

The geometry underneath the 2D modules

Model Finder, Edge Finder, Measurement, Metrology, Calibration and Bead — solving, implementing and debugging the geometry, algebra and non-linear optimisation underneath them, and widening the tests that guard them. Took the Advanced Geometric Matcher from the algorithm it had been to a public API, designed with the team.

Bringing machine learning into a geometric library

Brought classical machine learning into modules that had been purely geometric, and documented the new APIs and customer examples that went out with them. Supervised trainees and interns.

Built

Advanced Geometric Matcher API · MIL 2D modules · customer-facing API examples

Stack

C++ · geometric matching · metrology · non-linear optimisation · classical ML

Tools

Visual Studio · Git / GitHub · JIRA · Agile

Learned

Writing the documentation and the examples is where an API design gets tested — the questions that come back are about the interface, almost never about the algorithm.

2019 — 2022

Software Developer Matrox Imaging

Matrox Imaging became part of Zebra Technologies in 2022; the work continued without a break.

Learning the industry

First job after the master’s, on the modules that measure things: Calibration, Measurement and Metrology. Designed the Advanced Geometric Matcher, the algorithm that later became a public API.

Working inside a large C++ codebase

Replaced older solvers in the geometry modules with non-linear optimisers, Levenberg–Marquardt among them, in a library whose existing behaviour thousands of installed applications depend on.

Built

Pattern matching · Edge detection · Calibration · Measurement and metrology

Stack

C++ · non-linear optimisation · Levenberg–Marquardt · classical ML

Tools

Visual Studio · Git · SVN

Learned

Writing a better algorithm is the short half of the job; getting it into a library other people already depend on, without changing an answer they rely on, is the long one.

2017 — 2019

M.Sc., Control Systems Engineering Polytechnique Montréal

GPA 3.87/4 · Al Ghurair Foundation Scholarship — 1 of 100 selected from more than 15,000 applicants.

How I got to Canada

The scholarship was awarded on academic merit and paid for the master’s. It is the reason the rest of this page happens in Montréal.

Systems, not only coursework

Every course that mattered ended in something that had to run: a robot that had to reach the point, a controller that had to hold its deadline, a camera that had to tell the arm where the part was.

Built

Control theory · Robotics · Image processing

Stack

C++ · digital control · detection and estimation · stochastic and robust control · image processing

Tools

QNX · ROS · MATLAB / Simulink · Fanuc robots

Learned

A control law that is correct on paper and late by ten milliseconds is wrong — the deadline is part of the specification, not a detail of the implementation.

2012 — 2017

B.Eng., Electrical Engineering — Control Systems École Nationale Polytechnique, Algiers

GPA 17.5/20 · graduated 5th of 1,400 — top 1% nationally.

Two years of preparatory classes first

Mathematics, physics and programming, nine to six, six days a week, with the ranking at the end deciding which school you enter. It is where the habit of working a problem until it is actually solved came from.

Engineering that left the classroom

The degree ended in control systems built against real hardware and real factory constraints rather than simulations of them.

Built

Adaptive cruise control for an autonomous vehicle · PLC program for an industrial assembly machine

Stack

C · MATLAB · VHDL · control design · process identification · optimal control

Tools

Unity-Pro (Schneider) · Simatic-Manager (Siemens) · Simulink · LabVIEW

Learned

Hardware does not care how elegant the model is: the first assembly machine I programmed spent its faults on sensors and wiring, not on the control logic I had spent the term on.