Hire Matthew
Hello! I’m available for hire. Maybe your problems sounds like ones I’ve solved?
I am the co-founder and former MD (CEO) of Bytemark, so I’ve designed and programmed large-scale, consumer-facing internet hosting products.
Bytemark’s customers were folks with apps hitting the big-time; they came to Bytemark because their apps were struggling. I turned around a lot of bespoke solutions and small-scale platforms to help them.
This culminated in the design of BigV (PDF link), an automated cloud hosting product with its own control panel and API. I coded the initial versions of its cluster, network and storage automation, and I saw it through from launch to hosting thousands of customers.
As Managing Director, I noticed that software problems are team problems. So in 2015 I started the initiative that meant Bytemark would hire by anonymous interview. This expanded the company’s hiring pipeline at a competitive time, and was a key plank in eliminating Bytemark’s gender pay gap by 2017.
So I’m particularly good at:
- Linux and low-level systems design,
- scoping, designing and building hosting platforms, or
- assembling an engineering team to maintain any of the above.
Open source
I wrote the first versions of all of these projects which were key systems at Bytemark:
- flexnbd, the network storage system that powers BigV
- pairvm, a failover hosting system optimised for one client who needed to run their 1970s software with zero down time.
- mauvealert, a universal network and server monitoring system.
- bgpfeeder, a small, programmable implementation of BGP for distributing routes.
Other achievements
- 2022-2023 I was Senior Software Engineer at Skiller Whale, writing and delivering material for coaches to train teams on Go, Java and REST APIs.
- 2015 Talk: Fair Tax Mark - a perspective from small business at the Fair Tax Mark conference
- 2004 Talk: Getting the best from your server with User-Mode Linux at UKUUG Winter conference
- 2003 Article: Dropping Windows with WineLib in Dr. Dobb’s Journal
- 2002 Co-founded Bytemark along with Peter Taphouse
- 2000 Programmed riscose, an experimental open-source emulator for Acorn computers
- 1998 Employed at Aleph One Ltd writing BIOS code, a complete UI rewrite & manuals for the last major release of PCPro 3, the PC emulator for Acorn computers
- 1997 Programmed Socketeer, an easy internet dialler for Acorn computers
- 1996 Programmed Swarm, a shameless copy of Crystal Quest, in Acorn User
Technical skills
I started my career in 1997 writing a PC emulator for ARM-based computers, and I’ve remained a systems programmer at heart. I’m never happier than when solving intractable problems with distributed or embedded systems.
For keyword-scrapers, these are my current specialisms:
- Systems programming: Go, Java, Linux, C
- Back-end programming: Ruby, Rails
- Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite
- OS: Debian, Ubuntu & Redhat Linux
- Containers: Docker
- Automation: Ansible, Puppet
Availability and rates
I work remotely from York, UK, but I’m happy to travel where that’s necessary. I’m available for 30hrs/week from October 2023 (unless I’ve forgotten to update this web site).
Feel free to contact me on matthew@bloch.tv.