Welcome to Donal Higgins's Personal Page


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Education
Experience
Projects
Skills
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Quick Facts
Location: Ann Arbor, MI (Soon to be SF!)
Focus: Low-Level Engineering

Last updated: February, 2026

About Me

I'm a graduating senior at the University of Michigan studying CSE. I'm mainly interested in low-level systems and computer architecture, but I like CS theory as well.
 

Education

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI
Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science
May 2026 | GPA: 3.9


Relevant Coursework: Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, Parallel Computer Architecture, Distributed Systems, Search Engines, Formal Verification of Systems Software, Programming Languages, Advanced Data Structures, Computational Complexity
 

Experience

Company Role Focus When Location
Applied Intuition favicon Applied Intuition Software Engineer Middleware incoming July 2026 Sunnyvale, CA
University of Michigan favicon University of Michigan Instructional Assistant Operating Systems August 2025 - May 2026 Ann Arbor, MI
Apple favicon Apple (CoreOS Power) Software Engineer Intern Power counters and regression tracking May 2025 - August 2025 San Diego, CA
Apple favicon Apple (Health) Software Engineer Intern 3D Data Visualization May 2024 - August 2024 Cupertino, CA
Fetch favicon Fetch Software Engineer Intern iOS app performance and SwiftUI migration May 2023 - August 2023 Birmingham, AL
Lockheed Martin favicon Lockheed Martin Software Engineer Intern Version Control Systems May 2022 - April 2023 Huntsville, AL

Experience Highlights
  • University of Michigan
    • Help students understand operating systems and general systems concepts!
  • Apple (CoreOS Power)
    • Implemented verification for power counters and reporting for the iPhone WiFi and Bluetooth subsystems.
    • Developed new workflow to upload standalone power test results, allowing any device's power metrics to be tracked.
    • Created automatic regression tracking that allows for automatic ticket creation when regressions are caught.
    • Developed an automatic weekly summary email for all WiFi power tests.
  • Apple (Health)
    • Prototyped customizable 3D visualizations of data on VisionOS, enhancing user comprehension of data.
    • Utilized RealityKit to create dynamic meshes and SwiftUI for the user interface.
    • Prototyped a test bundle, achieving a code coverage of more than 80%.
  • Fetch
    • Refactored view utilized by 11 million monthly users on the iOS app from UIKit to SwiftUI.
    • Optimized start-up code to achieve a significant reduction in app launch time by 5%.
    • Developed and implemented a debugging tool for WebSocket Events.
  • Lockheed Martin
    • Designed and executed a comprehensive version control solution for a suite of internal applications.
    • Implemented REST API calls to retrieve applications from an AWS S3 Bucket.
    • Developed a new user interface utilizing Unity, integrating it with the version control system.
 

Projects

  • I'm Feeling Lucky Search Engine | under construction 🔨🦺
    • Status: [######....] indexing in progress
  • R10K Style RISC-V Out-of-Order Processor | System Verilog, RISC-V, C
    • Designed and implemented a synthesizable N-way superscalar processor with early tag broadcast, store-to-load forwarding, non-blocking L1 caches, and instruction prefetching.
    • Achieved the best performance in FA25 EECS 470!
  • Lovebox Clone | C++, Swift, and SwiftUI
    • Developed an iOS application to send messages and images over MQTT servers.
    • Utilized C++ to receive and process incoming data to present on external display connected to the Arduino.
 

Skills

 C++  |  C  |  System Verilog  |  Python  |  Swift  |  OCaml  |  Git  |  Unix  |  RISC-V  |  Synopsys VCS  |  Verdi  |  C++  |  C  |  System Verilog  |  Python  |  Swift  |  OCaml  |  Git  |  Unix  |  RISC-V  |  Synopsys VCS  |  Verdi 
 

Personal Interests & Hobbies

  • Games - Mostly Counter-Strike, but I play other stuff occasionally
  • Lacrosse - Played through highschool and played some club at Michigan, plan to play post-grad
  • Movies - Favorite Movies: Uncut Gems, The Shining, Fargo, Monty Python and The Holy Grail
  • Poker - Not that great at it but always trying to get better
 

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