Cole Van Vlack

About

I’m an engineering leader with a Physics PhD who builds software systems for hard-tech products. I love where hardware, software, and real-world operational constraints all collide. I was the founding software engineer at Laser Depth Dynamics, helping turn a research concept into an industrial product that was later acquired by IPG Photonics. Since then, I’ve worked across startups, scale-up environments, and industrial product teams building systems for manufacturing, instrumentation, and hardware-integrated software. My strength is operating at the messy boundary where scientific innovation becomes a usable, supportable product. That includes real-time systems, hardware abstraction, test automation, industrial UX, integration architecture, and the cross-functional work needed to make those systems succeed outside the lab. I care a lot about building engineering organizations and workflows that scale without heroics. I tend to focus on the seams where products fail or teams slow down: unclear interfaces, weak validation, brittle integrations, and process that adds friction without improving outcomes. I’m happiest when I’m helping a team create structure that makes complexity manag

Experience

Education