Hi, I'm Matthew Berger 🦀
Senior Staff Rust engineer • Founding software engineer at Hyphen (2021-2026)
About Me
Senior Staff Rust Software Engineer working with Rust since 2016, with 5 years in production robotics.
As founding software engineer at Hyphen (2021-2026), I built the food assembly platform from first commit to a full controls suite in 22 months, underpinning $35M+ in combined investment from Chipotle and Cava. The platform runs on a real-time async pub/sub message broker with sub-millisecond latency across 4+ years of fleet operation.
Open source: 280k+ crates.io downloads (freecs, enum2 family) and the Nightshade game engine (live demo).
Highlights
Experience
Founding Software Engineer (Senior → Staff → Senior Staff)
Hyphen Robotics
Jul 2021 - May 2026
- • Diagnosed scaling limitations in the legacy PLC system, led the technical pivot to embedded Rust, and pioneered RP2040 firmware with Embassy-rs, creating the first Rust TMC5160 motor and AS5048A encoder drivers proving Rust could meet real-time control loop requirements
- • Architected and built the food assembly robotics controls software, with 1,000+ pull requests merged across 4 years, from getting the first motor moving to orchestrating cloud services
- • Designed and built MBTT (Matt Berger Telemetry Transport), the async pub/sub message broker over TCP with cross-host bridging, length-prefixed postcard framing, and compile-time topic contracts via procedural macros, coordinating every distributed process across the industrial PC and RP2040 boards at sub-millisecond local latency across 4+ years of continuous fleet operation
- • Implemented a no_std embedded MBTT client on Embassy with bounded static channels, integrating RP2040 firmware into the same pub/sub topology as the industrial PC
- • Authored the controls suite as a multi-process system of state-machine-based servers corresponding to the robot equipment, communicating via typed command/event contracts over the broker, with coordinator servers orchestrating cross-subsystem behavior
- • Shipped Hyphen Studio, a Dioxus desktop application enabling operators to configure makeline layouts and parameters directly
- • Built Hyphen Explorer (Bevy + egui) for real-time IPC visualization, debugging, and system control, achieving 100% adoption across all Hyphen engineers
- • Rewrote the TypeScript/GraphQL tablet portal in pure Rust with Leptos, connecting over WebSockets to a forwarding server that bridges broker topics out to web clients, enabling direct import of the same Rust contract types used across the controls suite
- • Mentored 6 engineers new to Rust into productive contributors within 2 months each, enabling parallel horizontal platform expansion over the following year
- • Built a custom Yocto Linux distribution and AWS Greengrass-managed OTA pipeline delivering firmware and software updates to makelines
Software Engineer III
Sierra Nevada Corporation
May 2020 - Jul 2021
- • Developed C++/Rust aerospace imaging system capable of collecting and orthorectifying 5GB/sec of pixel data during a flight
- • Built asynchronous Rust simulator for unavailable flight hardware, saving 3 months on project timeline
Software Engineer
Scientific Games
Jul 2019 - May 2020
- • Contributed to the GDK, Scientific Games' Unity-based engine powering casino game titles across their portfolio
- • Migrated multiple shipped casino game titles from Unity's legacy GUI text system to TextMeshPro, modernizing typography rendering across the GDK portfolio
Software Engineer (Intern through Full-Time)
Hamilton Company
Oct 2014 - Jul 2019
- • Built safety-critical software in a cross-disciplinary environment that calibrates and operates liquid-handling medical robots
- • Reduced calibration development from 2 months to 2 weeks by consolidating multiple applications into a single GUI and reusable plugin framework
- • Developed the calibration application that a major customer, Illumina ($2M in machine purchases), used to drive Hamilton's robot firmware
- • Built software adapters bridging SiLA-compliant and non-SiLA lab instruments, expanding Hamilton's interop reach across third-party device manufacturers and driving instrument sales
Skills
Tools and domains I've shipped to production.
Published Crates
bamboo-ssg 🦀
A fast static site generator written in Rust. Markdown + Tera templates, syntect-highlighted code blocks with copy/line-numbers toolbar, live-reload dev server with incremental builds, RSS/Atom/sitemap, Sass, responsive images, and an embedded default theme. Powers this site and matthewberger.dev/articles.
cameras 🦀
A cross-platform camera library for Rust with data-oriented design: explicit format negotiation, push-based frame delivery, typed errors, zero trait objects. macOS (AVFoundation), Windows (Media Foundation), Linux (V4L2), plus optional RTSP. Ships with dioxus-cameras and egui-cameras integration crates.
charter 🦀
Structural codebase intelligence for LLMs via MCP. Parses Rust and Python projects with tree-sitter, builds an in-memory index of symbols, call graphs, type hierarchies, and cross-references, then exposes it through structured JSON tools. Sub-millisecond query latency.
dhcplease 🦀
A cross-platform DHCP server library and CLI with full protocol implementation (all 8 DHCP message types), Option 61 client identifiers, Option 82 relay-agent echo, static MAC-to-IP bindings, persisted leases, concurrent packet handling with rate limiting. Async Tokio. Runs natively on Windows, including interface binding (rare for open-source DHCP servers).
egui-thematic 🦀
A theme editor and configuration system for egui applications with full control over 73 visual properties, live preview window, 9 built-in presets (Dracula, Nord, Gruvbox, Solarized, Tokyo Night, etc.), random theme generation, JSON/Rust code export, and persistence.
enum2contract 🦀
A no_std compatible Rust derive macro for defining pub/sub messaging contracts using strongly typed enums. Generates topic strings, payload structs, and supports JSON and binary formats.
enum2egui 🦀
A procedural macro for automatically generating egui UI code from Rust types. Supports structs, enums, nested types, and provides both read-only and mutable editing interfaces.
enum2pos 🦀
A Rust derive macro library that maps enum variants to their declaration position, enabling bidirectional transformation between variants and numeric indices.
enum2repr 🦀
A Rust derive macro that automates bidirectional conversion between enum variants and their numeric representations, eliminating boilerplate for manual type conversions.
enum2str 🦀
A Rust derive macro that automatically implements the Display trait for enums with support for custom formatting, templates, and no_std compatibility.
freecs 🦀
Archetype-based Entity Component System in Rust with zero unsafe code, Rayon-parallel system execution, sparse-set tags, deferred command buffers, and watermark change detection. The entire ECS is generated at compile time via a declarative macro. 48k+ downloads on crates.io.
nightshade 🦀
Data-oriented Rust game engine featuring a custom render graph, built-in editor, rapier3d physics, kira audio, gltf asset loading, scene graph, object picking, and Steam integration. Runs natively on DX12/Metal/Vulkan and in-browser via WebGPU.
stateless 🦀
A zero-cost state machine library that separates structure from behavior. Guards and actions live in wrapper code, not the DSL.
taps 🦀
A Tokio async pub/sub message broker for in-process messaging between async tasks. Topic-based routing.
Rust Projects
nightshade 🦀
Data-oriented Rust game engine featuring custom render graph, built-in editor, rapier3d physics, kira audio, gltf asset loading, scene graph, object picking, and Steam integration. Runs natively on DX12/Metal/Vulkan and in-browser via WebGPU.
freecs 🦀
Archetype-based ECS in Rust with zero unsafe code, Rayon-parallel system execution, sparse-set tags, deferred command buffers, and watermark change detection. The entire ECS is generated at compile time via a declarative macro. 48k+ downloads on crates.io.
bamboo 🦀
A fast static site generator written in Rust. Powers this site and the articles blog.
cameras 🦀
A cross-platform Rust camera library with data-oriented design (explicit format negotiation, push-based frame delivery, zero trait objects). Ships with Dioxus and egui integrations.
charter 🦀
Fast structural context generator for Rust codebases, optimized for LLM consumption. Walks crates and emits compact summaries suitable for AI tooling.
clippr 🦀
Convert MP4 to chunked GitHub-friendly GIFs. CLI tool for sharing video clips in markdown.
dragonglass 🦀
A 3D graphics engine built with Rust and Vulkan, featuring PBR rendering, 3D object picking, and a visual editor.
frost 🦀
A statically-typed programming language with Odin-style syntax and Rust-inspired ownership. Dual backend: bytecode VM for development, Cranelift for production.
wgpu-example 🦀
A minimal example of using Rust, wgpu, and egui without eframe. Shows how to build graphics that run everywhere: native desktop, WebGPU/WebGL via WebAssembly, Android, Steam Deck, and OpenXR VR with hand tracking.
vulkan-example 🦀
A minimal example of using Rust, Vulkan, and egui together without eframe. Features Vulkan 1.3 with dynamic rendering and GLSL shader compilation to SPIR-V.
opengl-example 🦀
A minimal example demonstrating Rust, OpenGL, and egui integration. Features a spinning triangle rendered with OpenGL via gl-rs and glutin.
stateless 🦀
A state machine library with a DSL that separates state from behavior, for writing clear finite state machines in Rust.
superbible 🦀
Rust implementations of OpenGL examples from the OpenGL Superbible 7th edition. Features advanced shader techniques, texture mapping, 3D transformations, and lighting models.
Go Projects
indigo
A data-oriented game engine written in Go with a custom ECS and render graph. Works on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Web.
freecs-go
Archetype ECS for Go, a port of the freecs Rust library that backs Nightshade.
wgpu-example-go
Go port of wgpu-example. Spinning RGB triangle on native desktop (GLFW) and WebGPU via WASM.
Other Projects
eager
An Ogre3D 1.9 and C++ project template using CMake for quick setup. Features multi-platform support, optional Bullet Physics integration, and Vagrant development environment.
scoop-nerd-fonts
One-command font installation for Windows. Maintainer of the canonical scoop bucket for Nerd Fonts and other open fonts. 440+ stars. Install via `scoop install <name>`.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Engineering
University of Nevada, Reno
2017
Minor in Mathematics.