About

I am a systems engineer. For seven years at HSBC I have designed, built, and looked after Linux and cloud platforms used by retail banking, commercial banking, and securities trading - including market systems where being down is not an option.

The work I care about starts with how a machine is actually built and ends with automation so good, I could 'working from home' on a beach in Sai Kung and no one notices. I've lead the modernization of a vast global Linux estate that took more than USD 30 million of licensing cost off the books.

My design philosophy is to start from first principles, build, test and iterate constantly, all while optimizing every last ounce of performance out of the hardware I have. Physics is the law. Everything else is just a recommendation.

Outside work I like to read history and philosophy, invest my money for outsized returns, play video games, and write. I also obsess over privacy centric, open source technology. I'm extremely opinionated on topics I understand extensively and unnaturally chill about the things I don't. This site is my public notebook.

See skills for how I work, or the resume for the paper trail.