Software Engineer • Commercial Pilot

Kalen Willits

Software engineer and commercial pilot based in New Hampshire. I build aviation software — and fly the airplanes it's built for.

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7+
Years in IT
5+
Years Engineering
3
Products Shipped
3
Open-Source Plugins
315
Total Flight Hours
215+
PIC Hours
95
TAA Hours
100+
Cross-Country Hours

I'm a software engineer with 7+ years in IT and five years building production systems — most recently aviation tools at Jeppesen ForeFlight that pilots use every day. I'm also a commercial pilot. The two feed each other: I build software for aviation, and fly the aircraft it's built for.

At ForeFlight I built the content delivery system, contributed to the community events feature, and designed the server-side education video layer for the mobile app. Before that I built data pipelines and mentored engineers at Arkatechture, and shipped full-stack web applications at Frontdesk.

Flying is the other half. I'm instrument-rated and commercial-certified with 315 hours across the Cessna 172, Cirrus SR20, Piper, and RV-12 — and I work as a flight simulator technician at Flight Sim Coach.

Flying over New England

Software Engineering

Aviation Tools at ForeFlight

Built the content delivery system, the server-side education video layer, and contributed to community events for the ForeFlight EFB — software pilots rely on every day.

Software Engineering

Data & Full-Stack

Senior Data Engineer at Arkatechture building pipelines and mentoring engineers; full-stack web applications at Frontdesk. 7+ years across the stack.

Open Source

X-Plane Plugins

Three open-source C++ plugins for X-Plane 12 — TrimGear, GlideStop, and MultiBind — built with the X-Plane SDK and CMake.

Aviation

Commercial Pilot

Instrument-rated and commercial-certified. 315 hours across the Cessna 172, Cirrus SR20, Piper Warrior, and RV-12, through every New England season.

Let's connect

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