I build systems where the hard part is correctness#
…and I care most when the result also makes someone’s work materially easier. Twelve years across search-and-rescue, fintech, telecoms, manufacturing and network security have taught me those two usually arrive together. Technology is the means; the product is the point.
Selected work#
AML3D: live C++ → Rust modernisation. I migrated production C++ and LabVIEW control software to Rust on ARCEMY, an industrial metal 3D-printing platform that builds multi-tonne parts for heavy industry. Delivered as a rolling rewrite (shipping features while rebuilding the foundations), it never disrupted production, and it ended five-figure annual licence costs and single-vendor lock-in. Along the way I merged two engineering groups into one six-person team, took releases from a multi-day manual process to a single click, and mentored four engineers from zero Rust to productive. I was promoted to Principal to architect the multi-robot successor platform under a A$2.24M R&D programme.
Firezone: cross-platform client engineering. I currently work at Firezone, the four-person team behind an 8.7k-star open-source zero-trust platform, helping make it one of the fastest and most intuitive VPNs available. I picked up Swift and Kotlin to maintain the Apple and Android clients, unified the FFI bridge that connects them to the shared Rust core, and reworked the Apple concurrency model onto Swift 6. Alongside that I drove a run of tooling and CI improvements (mise-managed toolchains, faster pipelines) for a sharper developer experience. On a small team, being product-minded means the website and the roadmap matter as much as the data plane.
Bitcoin: mobile trading, raised at a New York accelerator. I built an actor-based backend for a CFD trading platform and a self-custodial mobile Bitcoin derivatives app (10101, Rust + Flutter) that secured US$750k at a New York startup accelerator, building on earlier work on ItchySats, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin CFD protocol.
Search-and-rescue: mission-critical data acquisition. Earlier, I built data-acquisition software for Australia’s search-and-rescue and coastwatch aircraft fleet, fusing real-time sensor, GIS and video data into one operational picture. It has supported roughly 200 rescues a year since going live in 2018.
How I work#
I work the full vertical on purpose, from hardware integration and backend through to designing and building UIs for desktop, web and mobile. Systems is where I’m deepest (data planes, concurrency, FFI), but the product is always the point. I’m as comfortable taking a rough prototype to a stable, scalable product, UX included, as I am hardening systems that already carry real load.
I’m best known for Rust and reach for it when the job calls for it, though a language is a tool, not a tribe. I value strong typing because it makes correctness something you can reason about, which matters more now that so much code is AI-written, and I work fluently with agentic, AI-assisted workflows. C++, Swift, TypeScript and Python have each been the right call at different times.
Background#
A lot of how I break messy problems apart comes from academic philosophy background (BA) as much as an engineering one (MSc): two different trainings in taking a tangle and finding its structure. The same instinct shows up away from the keyboard: I perform improv and theatre, where the whole craft is staying composed with no script, listening hard, and building on whatever your scene partner just handed you. It turns out that is most of the job.
Work with me#
Available for engagements, from a focused contract to a longer embedded stint: technical leadership, Rust modernisation, prototype-to-production, and architecture & AI-workflow consulting. Remote worldwide (I work async with regular live meetings across US and European time zones), on-site across Australia, or hybrid. I take on a small number of engagements at a time, so the work gets real focus.