ARE YOU AN AWS INFRASTRUCTURE SPECIALIST? Please consider collaborating with me on Metastructure!

I'm an Engineer

Stereotypes exist for a reason.

My Story

I landed my first development contract in high school in 1985. I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after high school, became a Navy Surface Warfare Officer in 1995, and hung up my uniform in 2000. Along the way I earned a degree in Weapons & Systems Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy.

After my military service I helped found a number of technology startups, always in a product development role. In 2008 I landed my first "real" job, writing software to facilitate order entry & execution on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. In 2011 I founded a company that built data management systems for big financial institutions, including Northwestern Mutual, Invesco, and Bridgewater Associates.

In 2019 I left institutional finance and moved to Bali to chase more interesting problems, like:

• VeteranCrowd Rewards is a FinTech startp that aims to turn the entire loyalty industry upside down. I am the project's architect & lead dev, and I am VERY proud of the patterns that have come out of this work.

• metastructure is one of these patterns: a command-line tool that solves the trouble with Terraform.

• get-dotenv is the dotenv-powered automation tool that allows me to perform high-quality releases on 16 API projects, a front end, and over a dozen supporting projects, every two weeks, SINGLE-HANDEDLY. I post around 10k commits a year thanks to this tool. Check it out!

See my repos for lots more useful tools & templates!

My Rules

See Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code. They're a work in progress. That's the best kind.

My Goodies

If you want to get a process right, template it! See my pinned repos below for some great project starting points.

Don't repeat yourself! I'm growing a library of handy solutions to tricky problems. See the list here.

How Can I Serve You?

Do you have a great idea for a technology product? There's a HUGE gap between a great idea and profitable product, and it helps to have a partner who has navigated that gap before!

I'll help you work through:

CONCEPT: What is the thing you want to build? What is it NOT?

ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN: What are its parts? What do they look like? What are they made of? How do they fit together, and exactly what do they do?

IMPLEMENTATION: How will you build it? How much will it cost? How long will it take... and how early can you begin to recoup your investment?

The most efficient way to do just about anything is to do it RIGHT. From concept to implementation, strong engineering process is my superpower.

So You're A Consultant?

Nah. Consultants are glorified salesmen. I MAKE things, and I already have a job I love. But this ☝️ is exactly how I found it! I love helping people build cool things, so drop me a line and maybe I can help you move the ball forward a notch.

Contact Me

👈 Use one of the links over there!