Welcome to the ninth edition of our “Meet the SDV Committers” series of short interviews to present the people behind the Eclipse SDV projects. Today we feature Ramachandran Chakravadhanula, whom some of you might know as a hack coach from the latest Eclipse SDV Hackathon. From browser technology to software-defined vehicles, his career has been shaped by open source and collaboration. Now a software engineer at ZF and a contributor to Eclipse OpenSOVD and Eclipse Hephaestus, he shares how open source has influenced his journey, what makes the Eclipse SDV community valuable, and why shared solutions are key to the future of automotive software.

When and how did you start your career in automotive?

My path into automotive began 10 years ago, coming from a background in Chrome browser WebRTC. The first step was infotainment Internet Apps development, later Apertis, a Linux-based open source IVI [in-vehicle infotainment] platform. Since then, the journey has covered telematics control units, inverter development with Classic AUTOSAR and, today, software-defined vehicles at ZF.

How has open source software influenced or changed your work and career?

Open source has been a constant throughout my career, from WebRTC to Apertis to Eclipse SDV. It has shaped how software gets built: transparently, with peer review and in collaboration across company boundaries. Today, contributing to Eclipse OpenSOVD and Eclipse Hephaestus means the work benefits not just one team, but the entire community.

What has been your #1 benefit of being part of Eclipse SDV?

The collaboration. Eclipse SDV brings engineers from OEMs, suppliers, and tool vendors together to solve shared challenges as equals. These exchanges give valuable insight into where the industry is heading, along with the opportunity to actively shape the future of automotive software.

What’s your 1-sentence pitch for Eclipse Hephaestus – why is it worth getting involved in the project?

Hephaestus ends the cycle of every project rebuilding its own build and CI infrastructure by offering one shared, modular, AI-assisted toolchain, so teams can focus on what truly differentiates them.

You’ve also been involved as a committer in Eclipse OpenSOVD – what would be your 1-sentence pitch for this project?

OpenSOVD makes standards-based vehicle diagnostics open to everyone, and its modern API design makes AI/ML integration easy, changing how diagnostics will work in the future.

How would you describe Eclipse SDV in three hashtags?

#BuiltTogether #OpenByDefault #CodeFirstMobility

Ramachandran is a software engineer at ZF with 10 years of experience in the automotive industry, spanning infotainment, Classic AUTOSAR development, and telematics control units. He works on SDV innovation projects focused on vehicle diagnostics and over-the-air (OTA) updates for high-performance computers. Ramachandran holds a master’s degree in Telecommunication Systems from Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden.

Previous SDV committer interviews:

Gabriel Tomuta (Eclipse Ankaios)

Haishi Bai (Eclipse Symphony)

Luca Cominardi (Eclipse Zenoh)

Frank Märkle (Eclipse OpenDUT)

Kerstin Keller (Eclipse eCAL)

Elena Gantner (Eclipse S-CORE)

Michael Engel (Eclipse BlueChi)

Nhan Luong (Eclipse Autowrx)