If you work in Linux, cloud infrastructure, or security and want to take on senior- or staff-level responsibility, we’ll build the technical depth, judgment, and communication those roles demand.

Bring a design, a stubborn Linux or networking problem, or a security decision. We’ll work through the evidence, test assumptions, and weigh tradeoffs. You’ll practice explaining why your approach makes sense, where it could fail, and how you’d investigate. Expect direct feedback and next steps you can put into practice.

For technical work, we can trace behavior across system layers, separate symptoms from causes, and examine the operational costs of a design. For security decisions, we’ll consider the threat, the control, and what it takes to run that control in production.

I’m a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, with 25 years in tech. I’ve built systems, carried the pager, and handled production incidents. At Block, I founded Linux Security Engineering and built its hardened Linux image platform across seven distributions. At AWS, I took security infrastructure from prototype to production. You’ll get the perspective of someone who has made those decisions and stayed responsible for the results.

If you’re working toward a senior or staff role, we’ll look at the scope you own, the decisions people trust you to make, and how you influence work beyond your team. We’ll identify where you need more depth, broader ownership, or clearer evidence of impact, then choose practical steps you can take in your current work.

For interviews and promotion discussions, we’ll turn your projects into clear examples of technical ownership and impact. We’ll practice explaining the alternatives you considered, the decisions you made, and what changed because of your work. My experience as an Amazon Bar Raiser and more than 180 interviews inform how we’ll prepare.

I’ve taught Linux and shell scripting to UW–Madison users and staff, mentored junior engineers at Zendesk, and formally mentored seven engineers at AWS. I’ve contributed to promotions across security engineering, systems development, and data-center operations. I enjoy helping people understand difficult ideas well enough to use them, explain them, and question them.

I’ve been building systems since I was 16. I bought a 56k modem with paper-route money, learned Linux by wrestling with Slackware, and later built a computing cluster out of 75 Android phones just to see what I could make it do. Technology is in my blood. That curiosity still drives me, and it’s how we’ll approach the problems you bring.

We’ll start with your goal and the real work in front of you. As you put feedback into practice, we’ll revisit what worked, what didn’t, and what needs another pass. I’ll challenge your thinking, recognize what you do well, and be honest about what needs work. Bring curiosity and a willingness to act on feedback. Tell me what you’re trying to build, solve, or get better at. Let’s get to work.