Hey there 👋 I’m Max!

I’ve been a professional software engineer since 2012, and an amateur tinkerer since sometime in the 90s.

Right now, I’m a Staff Backend Engineer at GitLab working on some really interesting problems at huge scale.

I’ll turn my hand to anything but right now my professional focus is on:

• Ruby and Ruby on Rails
• PostgreSQL
• ClickHouse OLAP database
• Kubernetes
• Event analytics
• Mentorship of junior engineers
• Being an advocate for all-remote companies and engineering teams

I love solving problems. Writing code is just part of that. You’ll always hear me asking “Why?”, narrowing scopes and focussing minds on building what needs to be built and nothing more.

In the past 12 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with organisations large and small in all industries. From two-person social media startups, tiny archive projects on the northern-most tip of the United Kingdom to multinational humanitarian charities and most recently at GitLab as a Staff IC engineer.

Outside of my regular day job I am:

• The Vice Chair and Trustee of Friends of Cotteridge Park, where we make our local park the best park in the city. We provide fun activities, community and belonging for everyone in the community and all for free.
• School Governor at Cotteridge Primary School, focussing on IT.
• Ex-Boarder at Guide Dogs where we looked after trainee guide dogs during the training.
• Mentor at School of Code, helping the next generation of technology professionals get a start in their careers.
• A lapsed pianist, with a Grade 6 in classical piano and Grade 5 in jazz piano.