Principal Software Engineer · systems thinker · builder of things that shouldn't be possible solo

Give me a complex system and a hard problem — I'll find the shape of it fast, and the robust fix.

I've been writing software since 2003, across an unusually wide set of industries — Manufacturing/ERP, e-commerce, retail, banking, transport, and healthcare (where I'm a Principal Software Engineer today). Different domains, same instinct: see the whole system quickly, get to the root cause faster than expected, and design a solution that holds up.

That's the through-line of my career. Teams bring me in to understand a large, unfamiliar system fast — often faster than people who've lived in it longer — and to turn a tangle of symptoms into a clear root cause and a solid fix. Architecture, design, implementation, and the hard-to-reproduce production bug are the parts I enjoy most.

Now I'm using that same instinct to learn in the open — building real, ambitious systems from scratch and sharing them. My rule for the AI era is simple: leverage whatever tool helps you learn and contribute. The goal is knowledge and impact, not the label on the tool.

Three public organizations, each a complete idea taken from a blank page to something that runs.

A from-scratch, security-first, self-healing microkernel in Rust on RISC-V. It runs drivers as isolated capability-holding user-space components, keys an encrypted IPC channel with post-quantum cryptography, and — the heart of it — diagnoses its own crashes and learns from them across reboots, consulting itself instead of a support forum.  → perenne-os.github.io/perenne

An open identity protocol for decentralized systems: unique, human-readable identity symbols derived from device-held passkeys — no accounts, no servers, no central authority. Includes tooling for phishing-resistant auth, offline verification, content signing, and even an MCP trust layer.  → prysym.github.io/open-identity-symbols

Open-source, no-install AI guides that help students explore careers, build balanced college lists, navigate scholarships, and write authentic essays — honest guidance as a starting point, not a replacement for counselors.  → pathfinder-edu.github.io

I started on BASIC, Fortran, Pascal, COBOL, and Java in school and college, then spent my career going deep on the Microsoft stack — VB6, VB.NET, C#, .NET, SQL Server — and picking up whatever each problem needed along the way. A snapshot of the toolbox:

A wide toolbox on purpose — but the durable skill has never been any one of these. It's seeing how the whole system fits together, and picking the right tool for the problem in front of me.

• Big picture first. I map the system before I touch the code.
• Root cause, not symptoms. The fast fix that lasts beats the fast fix that returns.
• Learn by building. The projects above are how I keep my edge sharp.
• Tool-agnostic, outcome-obsessed. Use what helps you learn and contribute.

_{20+ years in · still building from scratch · still curious.}