Marco Zollinger

along with onway – how long have you been on board?

Since graduating with a degree in Computer Science in September 2020, I have been supporting onway’s embedded development team.

What tasks does your role include?

Our team’s main tasks include maintaining and developing new features for the CarlOS operating system that powers onway’s routers and the associated infrastructure.

What do you particularly enjoy about your job?

Working every day on interesting and varied tasks where hardware meets software. There’s always something new to learn.

Which technologies and topics do you come across in your job?

On the one hand, classic programming systems with C on Linux for the router software with direct interfaces to the operating system and network stack. On the other hand, I also work with various back-end and test systems using Python.

What professional expertise are you bringing to the table?

Like some others here, my background is in electronic engineering. This helps to solve hardware-related problems that often occur when developing router software. Studying Computer Science improved my understanding of software architecture and algorithms, and I also gained practical experience with wireless and wired networks and their security.

What are your plans for the future, what do you definitely want to achieve with onway?
One of my favourite projects is the HIT (Hardware Integration Testing) system, which can run automated tests of new CarlOS versions directly on the hardware. It is still under construction and cannot yet reach its full potential, but it already saves us time when preparing new releases and facilitates quality management.

Why onway? To me, working at / for onway means…

…being part of a small yet mighty team of “doers”. It also means seeing how the features we develop are used productively by customers and meet their needs.

Any final words?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

The way I see it, we’re all a kind of sorcerer’s apprentice here, aren’t we?

11/2022