Principal Software Engineer
I make complex software systems easier to understand and safer to change.
Principal Systems Architect & Platform Engineer specializing in high-consequence Ruby on Rails platforms, distributed OpenTelemetry observability, and legacy modernization. I stay close to the code, untangle monolithic dependencies, and help teams ship with confidence.
Looking for Mike's Résumé & Tailored Archetypes?
Access the complete 28-position career history, verified factual claims, ATS plain-text exports, or explore tailored role archetypes with 1-page executive briefs:
Technical leadership that stays close to the code.
My best work starts when no one person has the whole picture. Over the past 20+ years, I have served as Acquisition Lane Architect at OneMain Financial, CTO of venture-backed startups, and steward of distributed platforms. I trace failures end to end, clarify ownership, and turn what I learn into architecture decisions teams can trust.
Panoramic View
Start with what the system actually does.
Panoramic View is my practical framework for legacy modernization: map the business process, trace what the software actually does across runtime boundaries, and resolve the differences before changing anything.
The user of the system might be a customer, an employee, an automated process, or an AI agent. The same questions apply.
Logs, traces, diagrams, documentation, and AI-assisted analysis are inputs to the map. They are not substitutes for understanding the system.
- What does the business expect to happen?
- What does the software actually do?
- Where do those views agree, diverge, or remain unknown?
02 / Architecture Retrospectives
Cornerstone Case Studies & Production Proof.
Real-world architectural interventions from high-consequence financial and distributed platforms. Every case study details the structural problem, technical mechanism, and verified outcome.
Monolith Modernization
System Cartography: Mapping a 10-Year Monolith
How we mapped 10 years of undocumented Rails dependencies, decoupled seven lending funnels, and created a living 4D architecture map without stalling active delivery.
Read Case StudyDatabase Engineering & Compliance
Database Archaeology: Safe Multi-Table PII Purge Engine
Engineered a 5-phase zero-downtime deletion engine with strict lock-timeout budgets and WAL replication lag throttling across high-throughput PostgreSQL production clusters.
Read Case StudyDistributed Observability
Hunting the 4% Defect: Distributed Tracing with OpenTelemetry
Uncovered and fixed a silent 4% transaction loss between Rails and MuleSoft middleware tiers by rolling out enterprise OpenTelemetry trace waterfalls and synthetic canary probes.
Read Case StudyFintech State Machines
Instant Money: Real-Time Debit Disbursement Architecture
Designed Speedfunds two-phase state verification gates and idempotent ledger webhooks to safely disburse funds in real time without uncommitted read risks.
Read Case Study03 / Evaluation Paths
Start wherever you have time.
- 01 Full Résumé & ATS Exports Canonical ATS plain-text parse, structured JSON-LD credentials, and complete 28-position career history.
- 02 5 Tailored Role Archetypes Tailored resumes for Huntress SOC, Coder Platform Enablement, Telemetry Specialist, Fintech, and AI Systems.
- 03 20-Year Oral History Archive 211 technical interviews with software pioneers (Uncle Bob, DHH, Corey Haines) and Chicago craftsmanship roots.
04 / Public work
Documenting the craft for two decades.
I have written technical guides, spoken at conferences, founded grassroots engineering communities (SCMC, Geekfest), and recorded oral histories of modern software development.