Seven hack coaches, two tracks, and a room full of people ready to build together in Friedrichshafen.

There is a point in every hackathon when the original idea meets reality. The service does not start. The message does not arrive. The hardware behaves differently from the simulation. Someone says, ‘It worked five minutes ago.’ This is usually when the most useful conversations begin.

I am Christian Heissenberger, Technical Program Manager for Eclipse SDV, and I will be your Hack MC for the Eclipse SDV Hackathon Chapter 4. My job is to help keep the event moving, connect people, and make sure good ideas do not remain stuck on a whiteboard. Fortunately, I will not be doing that alone.

From 6 to 8 October 2026, we will meet at the ZF Campus der ZU in Friedrichshafen for two full days of hacking, surrounded by people who understand the projects, the platforms, and the kinds of integration problems that make automotive software interesting. Our hack coaches bring experience from open source communities, automotive engineering, research, embedded systems, cloud-native development, diagnostics, middleware, and vehicle testing.

What a hack coach actually does

A good coach will not take over your keyboard or build your solution for you. They will help you ask a better question, find the right project or interface, spot the assumption that is slowing you down, and connect you with someone who has seen the same problem before.

Whether you join one of the Hackathon Challenges or work directly on Eclipse SDV projects in the Freestyle Track, these are some of the people you will be able to learn from during the event.

Introducing seven of this year’s hack coaches

Naci Dai

Eclipse SDV Blueprints, Eclipse Muto, AI, cloud-native systems, and education

Naci has been part of Eclipse SDV from the beginning and co-leads the Eclipse SDV Blueprints and Eclipse Muto projects. He brings the perspective of someone who has helped build open source communities as well as companies, products, and classrooms.

His work spans software-defined vehicles, autonomous driving, graph-based deep learning, and cloud-native frameworks. He is the founder of Eteration, ReportBack, and Composiv.ai, and teaches at Sabancı University. If your team is trying to turn several technologies into one coherent solution, or connect a prototype to a larger use case, Naci is someone you will want to find.

Ramachandran Chakravadhanula

Vehicle diagnostics, OTA updates, Eclipse OpenSOVD, and Eclipse Hephaestus

Ramachandran is a software engineer at ZF with ten years of automotive experience across infotainment, Classic AUTOSAR development, and telematics control units. His current work focuses on diagnostics and over-the-air updates for high-performance computers.

Within Eclipse SDV, he contributes to Eclipse OpenSOVD and Eclipse Hephaestus. For teams working on diagnostic truth, fault detection, or the path between vehicle data and a useful engineering decision, his experience will be particularly valuable.

Leonardo Rossetti

Red Hat, upstream automotive communities, and the CentOS Automotive SIG

Leonardo joined Red Hat in 2016 and has worked across several engineering projects since then. Today, he collaborates with upstream automotive communities and the CentOS Automotive SIG.

He brings practical experience from the point where open source development, platform engineering, and automotive requirements meet. If your team is navigating upstream technologies or trying to understand how its work fits into the wider automotive software landscape, Leonardo can help you find the right direction.

Rakshith Mandya Nanjundaswamy

Automotive middleware, distributed systems, hardware abstraction, and vehicle APIs

Rakshith is an R&D Engineer at ZF Friedrichshafen, specialising in automotive middleware and software-defined vehicle platforms. He enjoys taking complex technical problems and turning them into solutions that can be built, tested, and understood.

He is also a committer for the Eclipse Open Vehicle API project. His interests include distributed systems, hardware abstraction, and automotive APIs, which makes him a strong coach for teams working across interfaces or trying to make different parts of a vehicle system communicate cleanly.

Frank Märkle

Distributed systems, Rust, embedded hardware, and open source development

Frank began his automotive career eight years ago, using distributed systems and JVM languages to solve challenges in vehicle production. His work is now moving increasingly towards Rust and software running on embedded hardware inside the vehicle.

Frank is a committed open source advocate and someone who genuinely enjoys sharing what he knows. Teams moving from service-level ideas to embedded implementation, or learning where Rust fits into the automotive stack, will find plenty to discuss with him.

Reimar Stier

Eclipse openDuT, virtual and physical ECUs, Rust, and hardware integration

Reimar joined Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation in 2017 and has worked across the full stack, including data processing pipelines, factory quality assurance systems, and near-real-time tracing for production lanes. He brings a software engineering mindset to automotive systems and is an enthusiastic Rust developer.

His current focus is Eclipse openDuT, where he connects virtual and physical ECUs to make SDV testing more accessible. At the hackathon, he will help teams work hands-on with openDuT and tackle the hardware integration issues that tend to appear just when everything looked straightforward in the virtual setup.

Shriram Ramalingam Gobichettipalayam

Communication technologies, uProtocol, and rapid prototyping

Shriram is a Senior Developer at TRATON R&D Germany GmbH, where he works on communication technologies and uProtocol. He is passionate about building robust solutions and turning new ideas into working prototypes.

For teams using uProtocol to connect services across platforms and transports, Shriram will be an important source of practical guidance. He can help participants move from an architecture that looks good on paper to communication that works in the actual system.

Bring the problem you want to solve

The coaches cover different parts of the SDV landscape, but they share one thing: they are coming to Friedrichshafen to build with you. Ask questions. Show them the approach that is not working. Explain the idea you have not fully figured out yet. Hackathons move faster when people share unfinished work early.

Chapter 4 offers two ways to participate. In the Hackathon Challenge track, teams can take on Doctor Whodunit!!, a safety evidence and fault-injection challenge, or Hack to the Future, which moves an SDV feature between virtual setups, embedded controllers, and real vehicles. The Freestyle Track gives contributors space to develop features, create integrations, improve existing functionality, and contribute directly to Eclipse SDV projects.

See you in Friedrichshafen

Eclipse SDV Hackathon Chapter 4 takes place from 6 to 8 October 2026 at the ZF Campus der ZU in Friedrichshafen, Germany. ZF is hosting the event and providing the facilities and hospitality. Eclipse SDV and the Eclipse Foundation are supporting the event as partners and sponsors, in collaboration with FEDERATE and HAL4SDV.

If you enjoy solving real technical problems, learning directly from the people behind open source automotive projects, and building something with a team, I hope you will join us.

Registration is open. Choose your track, bring your questions, and reserve your place. Register for Eclipse SDV Hackathon Chapter 4.

I will see you in Friedrichshafen. Bring your laptop. The coaches will bring the experience.