Jaken Herman
Lead Software Engineer
Software engineer with 9 years of experience building reliable, high-performance backend systems.
Primary focus on desktop software development with deep expertise in Rust.
My software engineering journey has taken me from the complexities of NASA's spaceflight programs
and mission control to the dynamic arena of sports analytics with the Houston Astros, and now to
the cutting edge of DNA sequencing technology at Othram.
Lead the development of a self-contained forensic genomics platform sold to law enforcement and government agencies. The platform runs entirely on air-gapped hardware — no internet connection required — enabling agencies to rapidly analyze genome files and get answers on matches, Forensic Genetic Genealogy (FGG), and MDFI analysis directly on-device. This architecture gives agencies full data sovereignty over sensitive case material, allowing them to leverage powerful investigative genomic techniques without exposing data to any external system. Built end-to-end in Rust with a focus on performance, reliability, and security.
At Othram, I develop bioinformatics software using Rust, contributing to a diverse range of projects. My work spans building cross-platform native applications with Tauri, designing serverless functions and APIs with AWS Lambda, and managing databases with Postgres, among other technologies. This role gives me the opportunity to gain hands-on experience across the tech stack while tackling real-world challenges in bioinformatics.
At the Astros, I contributed to the rollout of the second implementation of our Ground Control baseball analytics system. I leveraged TypeScript, React, and GraphQL to build dynamic, user-friendly interfaces, and utilized D3.js to create insightful visualizations and reports. These tools empowered coaches to enhance player training and enabled baseball operations management to make more informed trading decisions.
My duties fell under the MSOC contract which provides technical, managerial, and administrative work needed to ensure the availability, integrity, reliability, and security of the Flight Operations Directorate's Mission Systems supporting NASA spaceflight programs requiring mission operations support. The MSOC supports the International Space Station Program, including International Partner and Commercial Visiting Vehicles, the Orion Program, the Space Launch System Program, and the Commercial Crew Program. Mission Systems supporting these programs are under development and/or modification in concert with program formulation and implementation. MSOC applies to the mission systems for all of these programs and any other programs or missions requiring mission systems support now or in the future.
At Athena Engineering Services I worked with VB.NET, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework 6, and other various technologies for our CoilOps software. For our CoilOps Mobile app I worked mainly with C# and Xamarin.
As a student assistant web developer for the university I performed many duties, mainly that of building web pages and themes using dotCMS, jQuery, HTML, and CSS. I also utilized SiteImprove web governance in order to ensure that our site was up to WCAG standards.
Create stunning 3D games in a short amount of time using Amazon Lumberyard, a free and exciting game development platform. This book is a ground-up, out-of-the-box tutorial on 3D game development and programming with Lua and Amazon Lumberyard with little or no game development experience required.
Beginning Game Development with Amazon Lumberyard walks you through the user interface of the Amazon Lumberyard engine; teaches you how to develop detailed terrain using heightmaps, megatextures, weather, and vegetation; and takes you through exporting the game for distribution. The book will show you how to create a player as well as enemies while not getting bogged down with third-party tools for animation or model creation. You will also work with simple physics, colliders, meshes, weather generation, Lua scripting, user interface development, and much more.
By the end of the book, you will be able to create many different types of video games using the Amazon Lumberyard engine and even have a completed project ready to release or put in your portfolio.
Who This Book Is For
Developers, programmers, and would-be game designers who have long wanted to dip their toes into the world of game development but have found other game engines and platforms to have too high a barrier to entry.
Studied Computer Science with a focus in Software Engineering. Completed projects across a wide range of languages, frameworks, libraries, and toolchains — building a practical foundation in application development and system design that carried directly into professional work.