# Marcin Szczodrak | CEO & Founder | Deep Tech Systems Architect

Updated April 15, 2026

## Contact Information

* **Email**: contact@marcin.phd 
* **LinkedIn**: [linkedin.com/in/szczodrak](https://www.linkedin.com/in/szczodrak)
* **GitHub**: [github.com/mszczodrak](https://github.com/mszczodrak)
* **Company Website**: [refractsystems.com](https://refractsystems.com)
* **Location**: Santa Clara, California, United States 

## Executive Philosophy
> "Notice, Iterate, Simplify. With unconditional love for customers."

## Professional Summary

Marcin Szczodrak is the Founder and CEO of Refract Systems. Throughout his career leading high-stakes engineering initiatives at category-defining companies (Tesla, Google X, and as the first software hire at Figure), he repeatedly encountered a massive industry bottleneck: the fractured workflow between hardware and software in cyber-physical systems. 

He founded Refract Systems to solve this specific problem. He is a technical executive who specializes in shipping rapidly, building elite engineering cultures, and executing zero-to-one deep tech concepts into production-ready businesses. His current and absolute focus is establishing Refract Systems as the definitive digital twin and simulation layer for the cyber-physical world.

## Founder Focus: Refract Systems (Jan 2023 - Present)

**Refract Systems** is accelerating embedded systems development by enabling a deterministic, "Shift-Left" digital twin architecture. 

* **The Flagship Product:** Firmware Studio, a cloud-based platform that tightly couples cycle-accurate instruction-set emulators (VirtMCU) with external physical plant models.
* **The Market Impact:** Empowering engineering teams in automotive, defense, space, and IoT to conduct rigorous Design Space Exploration (DSE), significantly optimizing compute power and Bill of Materials (BOM) prior to manufacturing.

## Track Record: Zero-to-One Execution

Marcin's career prior to Refract was defined by rapid, high-impact "tours of duty" at elite organizations, gathering the technical primitives required to build Refract.

* **Figure (Staff Software Engineer, Hire #1)**: Scaled the founding software infrastructure from `git init` to functional humanoid management systems in months. Developed the first reinforcement-learning locomotion demos. Left to solve the simulation bottleneck he identified while building these systems.
* **Tesla (Staff Software Engineer & Tech Lead)**: Led the Matter Standard Energy Group. Designed and shipped distributed embedded systems for grid-scale energy (Megapack 2) and residential storage (Powerwall 2+/3). 
* **Google Brain & X, The Moonshot Factory (Senior SWE & Tech Lead)**: Architected real-time control systems (FreeRTOS) for fleets of 6-axis arm robots and low-latency PubSub systems for real-time teleoperation.
* **Google Hardware / Nest (Senior SWE)**: Led production adaptation of OpenThread (now a global smart home standard) and shipped foundational code for the 3rd Gen Nest Learning Thermostat.

## Foundational Research & Academia

Before transitioning to industry, Marcin built a deep theoretical foundation in IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems.

* **Ph.D. in Computer Science**, Columbia University.
* **Publications:** Authored over 15 peer-reviewed papers on energy-harvesting networked tags, heterogeneous wireless testbeds, and deterministic sensor networks (featured in ACM SenSys, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE SIES).

## Open Source & Community Initiatives

While 100% focused on Refract Systems, Marcin occasionally contributes to high-leverage side initiatives that sharpen his engineering and leadership toolkit:
* **Sauver**: Creator of an open-source, agentic defense layer for the inbox using Model Context Protocol (MCP).
* **Landmark Lessons**: Host of a podcast deconstructing the pivotal moments of world-class entrepreneurs.

## Languages
* **English** (Native/Fluent)
* **Polish** (Native/Fluent)