Christopher Eckart
I am |
About me
Hello! I’m a full-stack software engineer currently living in San Francisco, CA! I graduated in 2022 from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA. I’m interested in many technologies, like AI, climate tech, big data, web development, developer tools, iOS development, and more. I want to build applications that solve real-world problems. Feel free to reach out!
Skills
AI & Agents
LLMs, RAG, evals, MCP, OpenAI Agents SDK
Frontend
TypeScript/JavaScript (React, Next.js, Redux, Vite), Tailwind, Swift (SwiftUI, UIKit)
Backend & Data
Python, Node.js (Fastify, NestJS), SQL (Postgres, SQLite), ORMs & migrations (SQLAlchemy/Alembic, TypeORM), Redis, Firestore, Supabase, Scala/Java (Play)
DevOps & Testing
GCP, Docker, GitHub Actions, pytest, Vitest/Jest, PyInstaller, uv, Grafana, Splunk
Experience
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Principal Software Engineer
November 2025 - Present
- Led the technical integration of ChipStack into Cadence: decoupled shared Node packages from the VS Code extension and rebuilt CI, packaging, and releases on Cadence infrastructure, including a single source of truth for Python versions across the monorepo and cross-version, cross-distro proprietary wheel builds to support the Python upgrade.
- Migrated RAG indexing behind a common protocol, enabling a reversible transition from the legacy ChipStack backend to Cadence-managed infrastructure; built automated TUI tests to catch indexing, retrieval-quality, and agent-behavior regressions.
- Acquired ChipStack in November 2025.
ChipStack
Founding Software Engineer
May 2025 - November 2025
- Built client software for ChipStack's AI hardware verification platform, owning the React VS Code extension and integrating it with the CLI/TUI over a shared persistence layer; enabled enterprise deployments.
- Rebuilt the VS Code extension in React as a full client for creating, generating, and editing verification artifacts such as test plans, generated code, and run results; re-architected agent execution from legacy server-based LLM calls to CLI-driven agentic flows (OpenAI Agents SDK) shared across both clients.
- Designed the persistence layer unifying artifact state across the VS Code and CLI/TUI clients, replacing fragile per-client JSON with schema-backed storage (Zod/Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, Alembic) and wiring agent hooks so generated artifacts persist and resume across agent runs.
- Productized installation and upgrades via a one-command shell installer plus CLI-driven upgrade and config commands, shipped as a PyInstaller executable with per-customer LLM configuration and on-site smoke tests.
- Acquired by Cadence Design Systems in November 2025.
Qualtrics, LLC
Software Engineer II
August 2022 - May 2025
- Led development and production rollout of generative AI in Text iQ, enabling customers to generate hierarchical topic trees for advanced text analytics using project data as LLM context; won 1st place for "Innovative Use of Language Models" in a company hackathon and launched to ~70 early access brands.
- Delivered full-stack enhancements across 30+ repos using React, Redux, and Scala Play, including RegEx-based query syntax highlighting and deep topic hierarchy support.
- Cut page load times by 72% (44s to 12s) for large topic models through memoization, optimized state management, and scalable data structures; later helped build a React, NestJS, and Postgres platform for AI-assisted topic model creation and refinement.
Deloitte Consulting LLP
Government & Public Services Consulting Intern
June 2021 - July 2021
- Conducted stakeholder interviews within a large national publications company to understand and assess pain points related to the organization’s current marketing capabilities across all channels.
- Developed a playbook and technology enablement plan outlining both strategic and technical recommendations following a timeline as to how the enterprise could design, implement, and optimize its marketing abilities.
- Met with data scientists, consultants, and managing directors across the firm to hear about the real-world applications of statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in governmental and commercial contexts.
NCR Corporation
Software Engineering Intern
June 2020 - August 2020
- Created customer-facing validation tool to ensure correct web service integration with mobile self-checkout platform (Java); complete with customizable test suite, endpoint analytics, and user/developer documentation.
- Won 3rd place out of more than 300 teams in the company hackathon, acting as lead front-end developer for OCR nutrition facts scanning app (SwiftUI, iOS), personalizing grocery substitutions to shopper’s dietary preferences.
- Presented both projects to executive leadership teams at final intern expo and hackathon finalist showcase.
Raymond James Financial, Inc.
Information Technology Intern
May 2019 - August 2019
- Developed web-app to catalog and search RESTful and SOAP enterprise services across the firm (React).
- Utilized big data software (Splunk) to identify high impact errors in advisor-facing applications and presented solutions to upper-level management and executives, receiving the “Best in Show” award.
Publications
How Climate Movement Actors and News Media Frame Climate Change and Strike: Evidence from Analyzing Twitter and News Media Discourse from 2018 to 2021
Kaiping Chen, Amanda L. Molder, Zening Duan, Shelley Boulianne, Christopher Eckart, Prince Mallari, Diyi Yang
International Journal of Press/Politics, 2022. [pdf]