Twenty years of professional software experience across gift-card processing, fraud ML, payroll integrations, and document architecture — plus a hands-on side practice in firmware analysis and embedded Linux. Available for system-modernization, cloud-migration, and full-stack engagements in 2026.
Founder & Principal Engineer
Cumberland Center, Maine
Software engineer with twenty years of professional experience architecting production systems for fintech, e-commerce, higher education, and enterprise clients. Founded OpenSensor Engineering LLC in mid-2025 after 3.5 years at Collective leading payroll integrations and document architecture for SMBs.
Earlier career: a decade in the digital gift-card industry at CashStar and Blackhawk Network — Python/Django and Java services that powered millions of retail transactions, an introduction of Terraform and ECS across roughly 50 services, and three consecutive years on PCI and SOC 2 audit teams. Prior to that, an SDE I role at Amazon writing tooling for hardware load balancers, and a BSCE from the University of Illinois (cum laude, 2008) with a minor in International Engineering — Italian Studies.
Side practice in firmware and embedded Linux — about three years deep, but the output is real: a maintained Python Packaging Authority project, an open-source NN runtime built from a clean reverse-engineering, and coordinated CVE disclosures on Ingenic SoC boot ROMs (BSides Maine 2026 talk).
Service decomposition, message-driven workflows, REST/GraphQL APIs, and the React/Next.js layer on top. Delivered for fintech and e-commerce platforms processing real volume.
Python · Django · Java · React · Next.js · PostgreSQL · Redis
On-prem-to-cloud migrations on AWS and DigitalOcean Kubernetes. Terraform-driven infrastructure introduced across roughly 50 services in a previous role; ECS, EKS, and DO clusters in production.
AWS · DigitalOcean · Kubernetes · Terraform · ECS · Docker
Legacy monolith decomposition, version uplift, and replacement of file-based integrations with API-first contracts. Strategic, incremental, and verifiable in production. Workflow-engine-driven orchestration when the steps need to be auditable.
Microservices · REST · GraphQL · Conductor (Orkes) · Celery
Gift-card processing, transaction-level fraud ML (logistic regression, xgboost, Pandas-driven feature work), and three consecutive years on PCI / SOC 2 audit teams. Incident manager (escalated L3 on-call) for three years.
PCI · SOC 2 · Pandas · xgboost · Logistic Regression · L3 On-Call
Pragmatic ML in production: model deployment, automated transaction categorization, document classification, and edge inference (200× speedup on an embedded NN accelerator). Pandas-heavy data pipelines feed everything upstream.
Pandas · xgboost · PyTorch · ONNX · Data Science · LLMs · Edge AI
Elasticsearch / Kibana monitoring stacks, ingress hardening, and proactive threat detection. Document architecture built on S3 + Elasticsearch in a previous role.
Elasticsearch · Kibana · Terraform · Ingress
Side practice — about three years deep but the output is real: firmware analysis, secure-boot review, ISP / sensor bring-up, and reverse-engineering work that has produced CVEs and an open-source NN runtime.
C · Rust · Buildroot · OpenWRT · GDB · IDA
Tier-2 New England institution (abstracted)
Architected the on-prem-to-cloud migration of an institutional platform onto DigitalOcean Kubernetes. Navigated seven major version uplifts in sequence and replaced legacy file-based integrations with API-first contracts.
Kubernetes · Java · REST · Active Directory
Fintech / SMB platform (Collective)
Led the Gusto payroll integration enabling S-corp salary processing in-app. Subsequently built the in-app tax-organizer workflow on Orkes Conductor, used across three consecutive tax seasons. Quarterly tax-estimate calculator and automated transaction categorization.
Python · Conductor · S3 · Elasticsearch · Stripe
Blackhawk Network
Senior Staff. Introduced Terraform and converted ~50 services to ECS on Docker with auto-scaling. Built fraud ML (logistic regression / xgboost) at the transaction layer. Incident manager (escalated L3) for three years; PCI + SOC 2 audit team three years running.
Terraform · ECS · Python · xgboost · PCI · SOC 2
CashStar
Backend re-architecture eliminating Tomcat in favor of Python APIs validating requests via RabbitMQ. Python 2→3 conversions, Django uplifts, Celery introduction, Redis as memcached replacement (with a locking/throttling library used widely in-house).
Python · Django · Celery · Redis · RabbitMQ · Java
OpenSensor sister property
Lightweight network-video-recorder for low-resource hardware. Now also a managed cloud product.
Python Packaging Authority
Long-term maintainer. Release engineering, dependency-resolver work, and triage of an OSS project relied on by tens of thousands of Python developers.
thingino-accel
Open-source NN runtime built from a clean reverse-engineering of an embedded NN accelerator. MXUv3 SIMD acceleration and ORAM memory optimization. 200× faster inference than the vendor stack.
Open firmware for IP cameras
Upstream contributions to Thingino, the open-source firmware project for affordable IP cameras built on Ingenic SoCs.
A short note describing the problem — the system, the constraint, the deadline — gets you a fast read and a real reply. If a 30-minute call makes sense after that, we'll set one up.
