Location: Seattle
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Rust, C/C++, Python, SQL, Kubernetes, many
others
Résumé/CV: https://ahicks.io/files/resume.pdf
Email: ahicks@ahicks.io
My first resume-worthy project was working with Mozilla on the Rust compiler for 6 months [0], implementing the ability to reorder fields in structs to eliminate padding. My work here was primarily a cleanup project which also unblocked many other Rust layout features that people benefit from today. I then detoured into Python/Django on top of Kubernetes, writing scalable infrastructure such as a giant media transcoding cluster. After that, I pivoted back to C/C++ working at Backtrace I/O. If you play a lot of videogames, our software is probably on your system, as we indexed and processed native crashes for many of the largest videogame publishers. This was big data on the order of tens to hundreds of terabytes per day. I was able to attain exposure to the concerns at that scale–including custom database design. While there, I spearheaded the adoption of Rust in the org, initially for microservices and later as part of our C codebase. I’m now one of the most experienced Rust engineers you’ll find. We did neat things some of which are open source, for example our feature flag system that rewrote code at runtime [1] and our Sqlite VFS that replicates to S3 [2]. As a benchmark of our success, we managed to be acquired by Sauce Labs, a company easily 10 times our size.
Though we weren’t successful in the long term, I also bring some business experience to the table as some friends and I did manage to run a contracting company for a while.
Outside of work I play around with DSP and audio synthesis projects, including optimization using lower level details such as SIMD. I also think about programming language design. Recently, I’ve been working to mod Factorio to make it playable by the blind. I am 100% blind myself, and I’ve managed to win it multiple times. You can get info on it at [3], and I did a stream which also demonstrates my ability to speak ad-hoc without much preparation at [4]. It also answers the question “how do you use the computer?”, one of the more common questions I get. In terms of technical skill, when I joined the project it was one 20000 line file, and now it’s maintainable and nicely split up.
My salary expectation is $200k+. I’m looking for mid-sized to small startups. At this point, I’m able to take some risks. Hopefully this interests you. I know I’ve said a lot. That’s because I’m looking for the right fit, not the fast fit. If you hire me, I want to be there for the long term.
0: https://ahicks.io/posts/April%202017/rust-struct-field-reord…
1: https://engineering.backtrace.io/2021-12-19-bounded-dynamici…
2: https://engineering.backtrace.io/2021-12-02-verneuil-s3-back…
