Welcome, Traveler
I'm Liam — a software engineer from the West Coast who started out designing circuits and ended up building distributed systems. I love the craft of making things: clean code, elegant architecture, systems that hold up under pressure.
This is my corner of the woods. A place to share the projects I've built, the things I've been learning, and the ideas I want to pass on. I care a lot about helping people grow. Whether that's through mentoring, writing, or just building things worth studying.
Projects
Each project is a path I've explored — some winding, some steep, all worth the journey.
Rules Engine
Evaluates complex user-defined schemas and rules
- Designed a stateless, horizontally scalable rule engine evaluating dynamic user-defined schemas via Common Expression Language
- Achieved ~7k RPS per instance under sustained load (10-minute test, ~4M evaluations)
- Identified and analyzed saturation behavior at tail latencies (p95 ~2.8s under peak load)
Distrace
Distributed tracing backend for OpenTelemetry
- Correlates out-of-order spans across services using TraceID grouping and parent–child resolution
- Implements bounded trace completion with inactivity and max-age limits (30s / 5m) to balance completeness with memory constraints
Blog
Field notes and reflections gathered along the trail — thoughts on craft, technology, and the slow art of building things that matter.
Resume
You've reached the peak. The full map of the journey lies ahead.
