I'm a software engineer and open-source contributor with more than fifteen years of experience. I work mostly in PHP (typically Laravel and Symfony) and TypeScript, with a healthy amount of Go and rather too much bash scripting on the side. My focus is high-performance architecture, security hardening, and scalable API design.

Over the years I've built and maintained mission-critical systems for a major global cola manufacturer, a Hollywood studio, and one of the largest European football leagues, along with secure networks used by millions of people. More recently I've been building AI systems for sensitive workflows. I care about clean, maintainable code, and about making complicated systems easy to understand.

I'm genuinely passionate about open source software, and creating my own open source tools is a major hobby of mine. It intersects heavily with my professional life: between them, the libraries and utilities I've released have tens of thousands of active installations. You can find the lot on my projects page, and I write about the process on my development blog.

Outside of work I'm happiest outdoors. I hike, cycle, run, and skate, and for years I played both inline and ice hockey, which were a major part of my life until a shoulder injury took me out of the game. Away from playing, I helped run the Dunedin Aces and Otago University inline hockey clubs, and I relaunched the Dunedin Ice Hockey League, which at its peak had two divisions of six teams each. Two surgeries later my shoulder is working well again, but I'm staying away from hockey to avoid any future injuries. I've travelled to more than 36 countries, often with a camera in hand. Photography has been a constant, and this site is where the results live.

Volunteer work has been a major part of my life. In Berlin I grew two communities, Free Advice Berlin, which grew to over 40,000 members, and Berlin Hikers, which grew to over 10,000 members. I also run the Berlin Coworking Club, a meetup that helps remote workers spend some time working alongside other people.

On the Mind

I have a keen interest in psychedelics and how they shape our minds, and I write about it openly. You can read the story in Shroomiversary.