Founding Engineer, Resilient High-Throughput Systems

This profile describes an experienced engineer specializing in building resilient, high-throughput systems that maintain behavior even when failures occur. They have primarily served as a first or founding engineer, taking ownership of systems requiring early scalability. Their expertise lies in high-throughput pipelines, messaging systems, media transcoding, and recommendation engines, particularly in scenarios involving heavy load, retries, and edge cases.

They also develop real-time dashboards for system observation and control, utilizing local-first approaches and browser-based technologies for media processing and real-time communication. Key achievements include:
- Delivering millions of emails and push notifications in minutes through robust messaging systems (with focus on retries, deliverability, and observability).
- Developing a browser-based video editing and encoding platform leveraging FFmpeg, Supabase, and AWS.
- Building real-time pipelines and recommendation systems for tens of millions of users.
- Scaling event ingestion by approximately 100x for analytics and experimentation purposes.

The individual thrives in small, product-focused teams, preferring end-to-end system ownership, close proximity to production, and proactive communication regarding risks and tradeoffs. They are seeking founding or early engineering roles (full-time, part-time, or contract), focusing on backend or infrastructure-heavy work for products with existing users or a clear path to market.