Overview
Relentlessly raises the quality of production systems through AI, innovative design patterns, and elegant architectures built on mature protocols—while building highly scalable, high-performance systems under tight latency and resource constraints.
Leads teams with a bias toward correctness: rigorous test coverage, mature observability, and test-driven development as discipline, not dogma. Strong advocate for the Unix philosophy, the open web, and protocol-first design, with work that directly influences web standards.
Experience
Asymmetric Information
Lead Architect of real-time portfolio valuation and risk analytics platform for multi-strategy funds. Aggregates positions across TradFi and DeFi sources with continuous mark-to-market pricing. Implements options Greeks (Delta, Gamma, Vega, Theta) using Black-Scholes-Merton model, Limited Partner balance and PnL calculations, factor-based exposure decomposition, and portfolio-level leverage metrics including gross/net exposure ratios.
Surge Platform
Architected global CDN platform serving ~196TB of static web content across 12 datacenters. Designed geo-aware DNS routing, implemented fraud detection and content abuse prevention systems, developed CLI with single-command deployment and CI/CD integration, built public API with JavaScript SDK, automated multi-region provisioning via Ansible, and implemented automatic SSL certificate lifecycle management.
Joyent
Led development of public REST API for SmartOS cloud infrastructure at Joyent, working alongside Node.js creator Ryan Dahl and npm creator Isaac Schlueter during the formation of the Node.js ecosystem. Pioneered production cloud systems using server-side JavaScript. Built Node.js git-push deployment platform, designed OAuth and two-factor authentication systems for customer portals, developed per-second metered billing infrastructure, and created public provisioning API for Node Knockout (no.de) hackathon platform enabling instant SmartMachine deployment for competition participants.
Mozilla WebFWD
Selected for Mozilla's startup accelerator program focused on open-source business development. Acquired skills in product-market fit validation, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, pitch development, and sustainable open-source business models. During this program developed the Harp Platform, a zero-configuration web server and static site generator that evolved into the Surge Platform, which continues to serve production traffic today.
PhoneGap / Apache Cordova
While employed at Nitobi, co-created PhoneGap (later donated to Apache as Cordova) with Rob Ellis, pioneering the hybrid mobile application framework. Implemented early JavaScript bridges to native mobile APIs including Geolocation, Accelerometer, Camera, Contacts, and Media Capture—often providing the first practical implementations that influenced W3C Device APIs standards. The framework fundamentally shifted mobile development by demonstrating web technologies could access native device capabilities, accumulating over 100 million downloads and spawning the entire hybrid mobile app ecosystem.
Expertise
Distributed Systems & Infrastructure
Multi-region CDN architecture with geo-aware authoritative DNS routing, HAProxy load balancing with health checks, advanced Redis access patterns and NATS JetStream for distributed event streaming, ZeroMQ message passing, Ansible infrastructure provisioning, AWS multi-AZ deployments (EC2, S3, Route53), provider-agnostic edge node orchestration, SSL/TLS certificate automation and renewal, NGINX reverse proxy configuration.
Quantitative Finance & Real-Time Systems
Real-time portfolio valuation and risk analytics, options Greeks calculation (Delta, Gamma, Vega, Theta) using Black-Scholes-Merton model, mark-to-market pricing engines, Limited Partner PnL computation, factor-based exposure analysis, WebSocket-based real-time data streaming, high-frequency position aggregation across TradFi and DeFi sources.
Backend Engineering & APIs
Node.js runtime architecture and performance optimization, REST API design with semantic versioning, OAuth 2.0 and two-factor authentication flows, SocketIO real-time bidirectional communication, MySQL database design and query optimization, atomic multi-region publishing systems, git-push deployment platforms, payment gateway integration (PCI compliance), metered billing infrastructure.
Software Engineering Rigor
Test-Driven Development (TDD) with Mocha test frameworks, comprehensive unit and integration test coverage, CI/CD pipeline design and automation, structured logging and error tracking, dependency management and security auditing, zero-downtime deployment strategies, fraud detection and prevention systems, static site generators and build tooling, npm package authorship and maintenance.
Open Source
Surge
CLI for instant static web publishing to production CDN. Single command deployment with automatic SSL, custom domains, and global distribution.
Harp
Zero-configuration static web server with built-in preprocessing. Supports Jade, Markdown, EJS, Less, Stylus, Sass, and CoffeeScript out of the box.
PhoneGap
Mobile application framework enabling web developers to build cross-platform native apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Later donated to Apache Foundation as Cordova.
Additional Projects
Active contributions across developer tools, build systems, and JavaScript libraries. Projects include dbox (Dropbox SDK), terraform, and various npm packages.
Speaking
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2017-05
— Chicago -
2016-09
— Semiahmoo -
2016-04
— Chicago -
2014-09
— Aarhus -
2014-09
— Copenhagen -
2013-11
— Buenos Aires -
2013-11
— Vancouver -
2013-07
— Vancouver -
2013-05
— Portland -
2012-11
— Seattle -
2012-10
— Portland -
2011-04
— Vancouver -
2011-03
— Vancouver -
2010-04
— Washington D.C. -
2009-10
— Vancouver -
2009-07
— Vancouver -
2009-07
— San Jose -
2009-07
— Toronto -
2009-06
— Vancouver -
2009-03
— San Jose -
2009-01
— Vancouver -
2008-10
— San Diego -
2008-09
— Vancouver -
2008-04
— Vancouver -
2008-01
— Vancouver