About Joey

I design and build systems for real operations — the kind with crews, warehouses, legacy tools, and real risk if things go sideways.

I started as an aerospace engineer in the late 90s and moved into software. Since then I've helped teams ship and operate systems that actually work in the real world. This weblog is where I make my thinking visible so you can see the structure behind decisions — interfaces, flows, failure modes, and how to make systems easier to evolve.

What I do

  • Design resilient interfaces and data flows across services and teams
  • Reduce coordination complexity by clarifying contracts and failure modes
  • Build small, composable tooling that fits how people actually work
  • Mentor teams on idempotent flows, observability, and pragmatic delivery

Background

Aerospace was my first systems education: constraints are real, failure is concrete, and clarity matters. Software added a new dimension — humans and organizations. I’ve led and supported efforts across logistics, field ops, and platform work, with a bias toward solving the right problem with the least moving parts.

How I work

  • Interfaces first: boundaries determine failure modes more than frameworks
  • Idempotent flows: make operations safe to repeat so recovery is boring
  • Contract thinking: promises you can keep, versioned with intent
  • Observability: instrument the things people actually need to reason about
  • Small pieces: prefer composable parts over big abstract machinery

Guiding principles

  • Most complexity is coordination complexity, not code complexity
  • Good systems respect physical realities: time, attention, and human limits
  • Design evolves — make the next change easy instead of the current design perfect
  • Prefer explicit trade-offs over accidental ones

Toolbox

  • Languages: C#, JavaScript, Python, SQL, HTML, CSS
  • Systems: HTTP, eventing, queues, retries, backoff, concurrency
  • Ops: Docker, observability, structured logging, tracing, metrics
  • Practices: TDD, CI/CD, contract testing, failure injection, progressive delivery, test - test - test

Contact

Best way to reach me is email and LinkedIn. If something here resonates or you want to collaborate, I’d love to hear from you.

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