Rijnard
van Tonder
Ph. D.

About Me

Hi! I'm Rijnard. I work a lot with software. I'm currently building autonomous agents from scratch, with focus on Formal Verification and rigorous proofs for software correctness.

I've worked remote at fast-moving startups since 2019. I'm lucky to have worked with strong teams at Google, Facebook, Sourcegraph, and Mysten Labs.

I completed my Computer Science Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2019 where I worked on developing new ways to analyze, manipulate, and fix code.

Posts | My thoughtstream

Dear Agent: Prove it.
Feb 2026

The Code-Only Agent
Jan 2026

All posts →

Work

Engineering @ Asymptotic.tech
Aug 2025- | Remote

Lead engineering for an agentic formal verification platform for Move smart contracts at Asymptotic. I designed and implemented an end-to-end verification loop (guided proof search, tool orchestration, and hybrid Boogie/Lean backends), delivering production verification for DeFi systems securing $400M+ TVL.

Mysten Labs
Dec 2022-Oct 2024 | Remote

I worked on tools related to developer experience and smart contract languages (e.g., a new system for displaying smart contract source code), and developer tools for the Sui blockchain.

Sourcegraph
Oct 2019-Dec 2022 | Remote

I developed and applied new code search techniques end-to-end for ubiquitous code search, intelligence, and large scale transformation. Won a research award in the process.

Facebook
May-Aug 2017 | May-Aug 2018 | Menlo Park, CA |

Added parallel processing (5x speedup), static taint analysis, and language server protocol support to Pyre , the Python static type checker at Facebook / Meta.

Carnegie Mellon University
Spring 2015 | Spring 2018 | Pittsburgh, PA |

Teaching Assistant for 18-739L (CTF-based security course) and 17-819O: Program Analysis.

Microsoft Research
May-Jul 2014 | Redmond, WA |

Intern at Microsoft Research with Patrice Godefroid in the RiSE group.

Publications

Rijnard van Tonder Lightweight Multi-Language Syntax Transformation with Parser Parser Combinators (Ph.D. Dissertation) , Carnegie Mellon, Aug '19.
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues Lightweight Multi-Language Syntax Transformation with Parser Parser Combinators , ISSTA '19.
Acceptance rate: ³²⁄₁₂₉ ≈ 24.8%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues Tailoring Programs for Static Analysis via Program Transformation , Distinguished Paper, ICSE '19.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁰⁹⁄₅₂₉ ≈ 20.6%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues Practical Program Analysis Tutorial: Tailoring Programs for Static Analysis (tutorial paper) , ICSE '19.
Rohan Padhye, Caroline Lemieux, Koushik Sen, Mike Papadakis, and Yves Le Traon Semantic Fuzzing with Zest , ISSTA '19.
Acceptance rate: ³²⁄ ₁₂₉ ≈ 24.8%
Rohan Padhye, Caroline Lemieux, and Koushik Sen JQF: Coverage-Guided Property-Based Testing in Java (Tool) , ISSTA '19.
Adriana Sejfia and Rijnard van Tonder Practical Fine-grained Binary Code Randomization (Tool) , ISSTA '19.
Alexandra Luccioni, Rijnard van Tonder, and Yoshua Bengio Using Machine Translation for Converting Python 2 to Python 3 Code , ML4D@NeurIPS '18.
Kush Jain, Mauricio Soto, Rijnard van Tonder, and Claire Le Goues, InferFix: Synthesizing Static Analyzer Fixes (Demonstration) , ASE '19.
Rijnard van Tonder, Claire Le Goues Capsules: A Compositional, Automated Approach for Fuzz Testing (Poster) , ICSE '19.
Acceptance rate: ⁷⁶⁄ ₂₇₄ ≈ 27.7%
Asher Trockman, Rijnard van Tonder, and Bogdan Vasilescu Striking Gold in Software Repositories? An Econometric Study of Cryptocurrencies on GitHub (Short) , MSR '19.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁵⁄ ₄₄ ≈ 34.1%
Rijnard van Tonder, Asher Trockman, and Claire Le Goues A Panel Data Set of Cryptocurrency Development Activity on GitHub (Data Showcase) , MSR '19.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁷⁄ ₄₀ ≈ 42.5%
Rijnard van Tonder, Claire Le Goues Towards s/engineer/bot: Principles for Program Repair Bots (Position paper) , BotSE@ICSE '19.
Acceptance rate: ⁷⁄ ₁₃ ≈ 53.8%
Rijnard van Tonder, John Kotheimer, and Claire Le Goues, Semantic Crash Bucketing , ASE '18.
Acceptance rate: ⁶⁹⁄ ₃₄₆ ≈ 19.9%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Cross-Architecture Lifter Synthesis , SEFM '18.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁷⁄ ₅₈ ≈ 29.3%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Static Automated Program Repair for Heap Properties , Distinguished Paper , ICSE '18.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁰⁵⁄ ₅₀₂ ≈ 20.9%
Ivan Gotovchits, Rijnard van Tonder, and David Brumley, Saluki: Finding Taint-style Vulnerabilities with Static Property Checking , BAR@NDSS '18.
Acceptance rate: ⁸⁄ ₂₂ ≈ 36.3%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Defending against the attack of the micro-clones (Short) , ICPC '16.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁵⁄ ₃₁ ≈ 48.3%

Other Docs

My Dissertation .

My Thesis Proposal .

My previous research group's award winning paper on automatically fixing COBOL programs, SIGBOVIK '18.

Projects

Personal

ELID: The last Wine ID system the world and AI will ever need. A universal identifier system for wine and wine producers, designed to be the definitive standard for all future reference.

My wine tasting speedrun of 203 wines and 26 wineries in Australia I think and write about wine. As of 2023 I hold Certified Sommelier (CMS) and Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) certifications.

Education

2014-2019 | Ph.D. Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
2014-2018 | M. Software Eng., Carnegie Mellon University
2013-2014 | M. Electronic Eng., Stellenbosch University
2008-2012 | B.Sc. Hon. Computer Science, Stellenbosch University