Matt Oswalt

Portfolio

I am a software engineer with a specific focus on distributed systems, automation, and internet and web protocols. I enjoy the challenge of working with large systems that require efficient, resilient design - both at scale, and close to the metal.

When I find the time, I like to write about some of the topics I’m working on or learning about on my blog (oswalt.dev) or on Twitter as @Mierdin.

Work Experience

I currently work as a Principal Systems Engineer on Cloudflare’s Egress team, within the broader Traffic Engineering organization. We’re a team of developers who maintain and operate an internal platform that many Cloudflare products and services use to connect to the Internet. Some of the technologies I directly work on include:

Generally, I’m most at home in a technical leadership role. I deeply enjoy working on highly complex systems, especially at large scale. I also enjoy and have a lot of experience with projects that require me to work with teams across diverse areas of technical focus.

I have an unconventional background, with a diverse set of experiences in software development, operations, infrastructure, product, marketing, and even a brief exploration into the management track. These experiences have provided me with clarity on what I’m looking for in my own career, while simultaneously giving me the ability to empathize and effectively communicate with anyone else in the company.

Generally speaking, my technical areas of focus and interest include:

  • Systems Software Development (primarily Go and Rust).
  • Distributed Systems
  • Linux networking
  • Internet and web protocols (TCPIP/IPv6, HTTP)
  • Infrastructure Automation (especially Cloud and Networking)

If you’d like to know more about my work experience, please .

Publications

My longest running publication is of course this personal technical blog, which I started at the very beginning of my career in 2010. It’s probably the best place to gain an understanding of my technical knowledge, interests, and how these have changed and grown over the course of my career. My most valued skill is my ability to learn new things quickly, which is made possible in large part due to the time I’ve spent sharing the knowledge I’ve gained by speaking at conferences, and writing technical articles on this blog.

I also co-authored the book “Network Programmability and Automation”, the second edition of which was published in 2023 by O’Reilly. You can see projects like this on my Amazon Author Profile.

Open Source

I’ve contributed to a variety of open source projects, and my GitHub profile will offer some good insight into many of the things I’ve worked on. Some highlights:

  • I created and maintained the NRE Labs website, infrastructure and underlying open source projects.
  • I worked as a core developer on the StackStorm event-driven automation project for a few years, and still contribute when I find the time.
  • I started a project called ToDD which performs distributed network testing. It’s suffering from a bit of neglect at the moment, and I’m hoping to have some time soon to get back into it and restructure things.

Presentations

A brief summary of some of my speaking engagements, with special emphasis on instances where public recordings are available:

Not recorded, but also:

Courses

Other Interests

My other interests include:

  • Fitness (primarily cycling and weight training - some running)
  • Music (Drums, Piano, and electronic)
  • Gaming (DOOM, Starcraft are among my favorites)
  • Graphics Programming (e.g. Vulkan)

I read/listen to mostly nonfiction books, and I try to update my bookshelf page with my thoughts when I have the chance.

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