About me

I am an engineer at WhatsApp, the largest messaging app. My work is focused on Erlang/OTP, performance and scalability.

I am WhatsApp ambassador in Erlang community, board member of the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation, and CodeSync speaker.

Experience

WhatsApp

Core Infrastructure Lead, 2017-present

Enabled scaling from 1B to 2.5B users and beyond. Redefined service discovery for WhatsApp, and then for all Erlang/Elixir users (contributed pg upstream). Solved Erlang cluster scalability problems and productionized cluster connectivity over TLS.

Created WhatsApp in a BEAM, an instant way to bring up a new instance of WhatsApp server. It revolutionized development processes, end-to-end and integration testing.

Converged internal OTP fork with upstream, and harnessed Erlang updates with Continuous Integration. This enabled 25% server footprint reduction for WhatsApp, and opened the door for open source contributions.

Introduced and scaled build and test tooling, enabling type-checking and third-party integrations.

Created and open sourced power_shell, production debug tool that became de-facto standard for white-box unit testing at WhatsApp. Another project, erlperf, often named standard micro-benchmarking tool for Erlang.

Redesigned WhatsApp server configuration pipeline, reducing multiple legacy systems to a single unified approach.

Trained a fantastic team.

WhatsApp

Software Engineer, 2016-2017

Designed and implemented CLI (Command Line Interface) to access production machines. The successor, argparse, became de-facto standard for Erlang/OTP.

Implemented global partitioned circuit breakers (gating) for all services.

Succeeded with seamless migration from bare-metal FreeBSD deployment and OTP 16 to Linux containers with OTP 20.

Erlang Ecosystem Foundation

Founding member, 2018-present

Founding member since the original announcement in 2019. Re-elected in 2021 and 2022.

Active contributor of Security, Build & Packaging, and Infrastructure working groups.

NetAlliance Pty Ltd (acquired by MelbourneIT)

Software Engineer, 2010-2016

Designed, implemented and made netfleet.com.au to be Australia’s leading platform for expired domain drop catching.

Prepared for launch in New Zealand and India.

Kaspersky Lab

System Analyst, 2009-2010

Delivered requirements and technical specifications for Kaspersky Endpoint Security 8.0.

Parallels

Program Manager, 2008-2009

Shipped Parallels Virtual Automation 4.5

Prepared for Parallels Virtual Automation 5.0 launch.

Architect, 2006-2008

Delivered specifications for core components (VM and Container templates, Security, Audit, Infrastructure Management, Power Panel Policies, ISO image library, Licensing, Hypervisor Virtualization Support).

Software Developer, 2005-2006

Designed and implemented major components of Parallels Infrastructure Manager 4.0.

Prior experience available on request.


The other side of me

I am passionate about Erlang and the entire BEAM ecosystem. I love my job and my family. But I need something else keep mental sanity. Join me in the sky!