I write software to solve problems. Whether that's in a corporate environment or an entrepreneurial side project, the process begins with identifying and deeply understanding the problem, and how the user would expect it to be solved. That mental model is crucial to building software that makes intuitive sense, that can be picked up and used immediately, and is a pleasure to interact with. The years I spent at Apple taught me the importance of craftsmanship in software engineering in many difference facets. From the paranoid conservation of resources on an embedded platform, to the deliberately endless cycles of iteration of the primary use case to ensure that sense of perfection and magic in the end product. As a leader of Software Engineers I continually seek to improve my ability to build a shared vision with my team that motives them toward self-organization and autonomy, as they seek to arrive at an innovative solutions that further their own growth as engineers.
Expert C and Objective-C skills with 20 years of experience in developing apps and frameworks using C and related languages. Fluent enough in C++ for some embedded/real-time development work as a hobby.
Extensive experience in Swift development for iOS and macOS in professional and side-projects.
10 years of experience using Javascript for web and hybrid web/native app development (including object injection), as well as modern front-end development using React and back-end development using Node.js.
I've been working with HTML and CSS since long before there was any templates or frameworks to use.
Contributed to many iOS, macOS and tvOS frameworks and apps at Apple, and have been developing for the iPhone and iPad since the first version of the SDK was released.
Released my first commercial macOS app in 2003, and have been actively developing on the Mac professional and entrepreneurially since then.
Experienced in back-end development and technologies using AWS including CloudFormation, Lambda, SNS/SQS, EC2 and GraphQL.
When I started iOS development, the devices had scarcely enough processor power and memory to run. That meant coding with extreme care. Now I practice the same on STM32 and PIC development for side-projects.
During my time at Apple, I first worked on the Mac App Store and integrating the Software Update functionality into the App Store. As part of this project, I led the effort to change how Software Engineers at Apple updated their machines daily such that we could install daily updates in the same way a customer would — through Software Update. After delivering a few WWDC sessions in 2014 I then went on to help the Wallet team complete the work for the first release of Apple Pay including near-field tap payments and in-app payments.
I moved to a Senior Manager role in iOS Apps and Frameworks where I led the Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Reminders app engineering teams, as well as the Settings and Setup (out of box) experience teams, and the teams responsible for Accounts, Authentication, iCloud Data Protection and Mobile Device Management. During this time I was the directly responsible individual for the development of the iCloud Two-Factor Authentication mechanism, iCloud Data Protection, and iCloud Family Sharing features including "Ask to Buy".
x15ventures is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's start-up builder and scaler. At x15ventures, I established the cloud infrastructure and app build patterns that enabled rapid time-to-market delivery of new businesses. This pattern included out-of-the-box risk mitigation and control attestation that is required in the heavily regulated financial services industry without any burden on the venture itself. Leveraging Hasura and PostgreSQL as an off-the-shelf GraphQL backend, and React / React Native or native Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android, we shipped experimental business ideas out to market FAST! We pioneered the use of graph databases and analysis techniques for real-time monitoring of code changes, production and non-production environment changes, and associated tickets. Combining the event data we had from multiple sources we were able to demonstrate a way to raise exceptions direct to the developers in near real-time to allow them to close gaps in controls without audits and reports.
In an enterprise like CBA, building great, market-leading digital experiences requires an API layer that consistently and intuitively exposes the underlying capabilities and data that powers the organisation's products and systems. In my role as Distinguished Engineer at CBA, I defined the group's Cloud Native and API strategy. A 'north star' for evolving the complex banking landscape toward an increasingly technology and software driven organisation. The strategy leveraged Kubernetes and Cloud Native Compute Foundation projects that, through a proof of concept build, demonstrated how a modern development and hosting environment delivers an excellent developer experience and ample control and policy hooks. These qualities made it inherently suitable for a banking environment, and the platform provides a step-change in safety and security compared to on-premises and bespoke infrastructure-as-code implementations. Combining the work I had done at x15 to create a low-risk, high-productivity working environment, we extended this environment to create a new workplace for the future of software engineering at CBA.
In my spare time, and as a creative outlet, I'm a musician. Part of the creative process is listening back to what you've created, making notes on what you do and do not like, and continuing the long, iterative process of shaping the song into the (never) finished form. I found myself with a desktop cluttered with .wav files and an iTunes library filling up with lots of half-finished work and became increasingly frustrated with the synchronization delays. Taking the notes either electronically or by hand was not so much of an issue, but I yearned for a way to take notes as I listened to the song such that those notes were directly linked to the point in time in the song, and that particular version of the composition. To fix this, I created Track Notes.
Track Notes allows me to render an audio file on my desktop, and save it to a specific folder or drag-and-drop it on the TrackNotes web site. The audio file is then immediately accessible from iPhone or iPad where I can use the TrackNotes app to listen back to the audio and add comments about areas that need more work. But, creating music isn’t always a solo endeavors. I often collaborate with other like-minded musicians. I added social functions that allow audio tracks to be shared for collaborative sharing and feedback.
The main iOS app is written in Swift 5 for iOS 11 and later. The macOS app that monitors a folder and uploads the new audio files is written in Swift, and the web site that allows drag-and-drop upload of files is written in React and Javascript. The back-end of TrackNotes is entirely described and deployed using CloudFormation with GraphQL being the primary API surface, backed primarily by Lambda, DynamoDB and Cognito. SNS and SQS is used for event processing and asynchronous decoupling of workloads from user-interaction tasks. The app is currently in closed beta testing, to be released mid 2020.
Lithium was my first commercial success as an independent software developer. I debuted Lithium at MacWorld in 2007, the same event where the iPhone was announced, and from there it became the network monitoring tool of choice for clients including Apple, NHL Films, South Park Studios, Saturday Night Live and NBC Universal, Bank of America, and many other colleges and production companies using Apple's Xserve and Xserve RAID platform.
I started development on Lithium a few years prior to the launch because I couldn't stand how ugly and horrible most network monitoring and management software packages were to use. None of them looked and felt like a native app on the Mac, iPhone or iPad — many still don't! And so I set about changing this by creating a native app for macOS and iOS to view monitoring telemetry, triage faults and incidents, and generate custom reports on the health of network, server and storage infrastructure.
The back-end of Lithium was written in C — this project predates the popularity of back-end frameworks like Ruby on Rails — and used a combination of proprietary socket communications and XML for transmission of data between the back-end and the client application. The monitoring data was collected using SNMP and vendor-specific protocols. The macOS and iOS apps were written entirely, and lovingly, in Objective-C.
