-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 - --- layout: page redirect_from: - /cv/ - /cv - /résumé/ - /résumé comments: False signed: True licence: Creative Commons title: Résumé description: "Staff engineer building AI-assisted developer tooling. Python, GCP, LLMs, and infrastructure automation." clippy_help: It looks like you're trying to hire Greg. Consider paying him in cheese 🧀 It's his favourite food! - --- [Download PDF](/resume.pdf) ## Summary Staff engineer building AI-assisted developer tooling and automations. I ship prototypes quickly and production code elegantly. Comfortable operating in high-pressure remote-first teams. ## Selected Work (high impact) - - **AI cleanroom-design code reimplementations:** built a Pi extension that generates a functional spec from code and context and then creates a characterization test suite. The extension then passes the functional spec to a fresh instance to implement using the characterization test suite as a success metric. The result is extensible functional parity code unburdened by the original implementation. - - **Async AI workflow orchestrator (triage -> implement -> assess):** built a multi-stage automation system that runs steps asynchronously, preserves context across phases, and uses heuristics to decide when to escalate to a human for guidance. - - **AI code reviewer that improves code quality over time:** built an internal review system that evaluates changes against *human-authored guidelines* and uses challenge/verification mechanisms to reduce hallucinations, keeping suggestions actionable and preventing the codebase from "regressing to the mean". - - **LLM-powered dbt model optimizer with fail-fast validation:** built a tool that proposes SQL optimizations, tests them against sampled datasets to catch issues quickly, and feeds concrete failures back into the LLM to iteratively repair until results reconcile. ## Technical Skills - - **Languages:** Python, SQL, Bash, Ruby - - **Infra:** Linux, Docker, networking, NGINX - - **Cloud & Platforms:** GCP, AWS, Cloudflare, Tailscale - - **Data:** dbt, Spark, BigQuery, warehouses at scale - - **AI/LLM systems:** LLM benchmarking, context, tool workflows, guardrails - - **Serving & runtimes:** vLLM, Ollama, llama.cpp - - **Ops & delivery:** CI/CD, observability - - **Microcontrollers:** ESP32s, Raspberry Pis, PCBs ## Experience ### Shopify - Canada (Remote) (Jul 2019 – Aug 2026) #### Staff Engineer, Data Warehouse Technology (Sep 2025 – Aug 2026) - - Built tooling to refactor production AI slop, reducing production code by 80% while improving performance, testing, documentation, and extensibility. - - Built an **LLM-powered dbt optimization tool** that fails fast on sampled data, validates semantic equivalence, and iterates automatically by feeding execution/validation failures back to the model. - - Improved reliability by adding validation gates for AI-generated changes (language-aware checks, clearer failure states, and safer automation defaults). #### Senior Machine Learning Engineer (Dec 2024 – Sep 2025) - - Built an **async AI automation orchestrator** for data engineering workflows using a staged approach (triage -> implement -> assess) with **human-in-the-loop escalation** driven by heuristics and confidence checks. - - Built an **AI code review system** that reviews changes against **human-authored engineering guidelines**, using challenge/verification techniques to reduce hallucinations and making suggestions one-click apply in GitHub. #### Senior Analytics Engineer (Feb 2023 – Dec 2024) - - Migrated core warehouse workloads from Spark to dbt on GCP. - - Improved modeling practices, review workflows, and operational consistency across a large shared codebase. #### Senior Data Scientist (Jul 2019 – Dec 2021) - - Led a small team delivering forecasting and infrastructure planning recommendations. - - Developed tooling to make load balance recommendations for our core infrastructure. #### Parental Leave (Dec 2021 – Feb 2023) - - Learned how to make a small human happy. ### CEO & Founder - Memair (Nov 2018 – Jul 2019) - Ottawa, Canada - - Built a personal analytics product end-to-end (backend, frontend, infra, and ops). - - Worked across Rails, Python, GraphQL, React, Flutter, and JavaScript on cloud + self-hosted infrastructure. - - Site: ### Sailing Sabbatical (Sep 2017 – Sep 2018) - Canada/USA/Bahamas - - Sailing [SV Catsaway](https://SVCatsaway.com) from Kingston, Ontario, to the Bahamas and back. - - Produced a [YouTube series](https://YouTube.com/SVCatsaway) documenting our adventure, honing video communication skills. - - Hacking on a few (mostly boat-related) [projects](/packages). ### Data Engineer - Shopify (Sep 2013 – Sep 2017) - Ottawa, Canada - - Data modeling, reporting, experimentation, and ML support for early Shopify. - - Worked primarily in Python/Ruby with Spark, Presto, and Rails. ### Data Specialist - Amnesty International (Mar 2012 – Sep 2013) - Sydney & Ottawa - - Supporter database projects; Rails + SQL; operational reporting and process improvement. ### Communications - Australian Army (Jul 2004 – Nov 2012) - - Peacemaking tour in [Afghanistan](/2020/07/publishing-afghanistan-posts/) 🇦🇫. - - Peacekeeping tour in [Solomon Islands](/2009/02/tongans-belgiums-and-the-jungle/) 🇸🇧. ### Instructor • Upward Dog Yoga Centre (Jul 2014 – Mar 2020) - Ottawa, Canada - - Teaching Acroyoga as part of [SmileyOm](https://smileyom.com). ## Projects & Self-Hosting - - Home lab: servers, Docker workloads, monitoring, backups, and secure remote access. - - Self-hosting (incl. Mastodon) and home automation (Home Assistant / ESP32). ## Writing & Speaking - - Speaker: AI Tinkerers Toronto (Nov 2025) and many internal Shopify communications. - - [Blog posts](https://gregology.net/posts/). ## Open Source & Patents - - [Packages](https://gregology.net/packages/) (Python/Ruby/npm; mixed recency) - - [Patents](https://gregology.net/patents/) ## Education Leadership Principles - Harvard Business School Online (2026) Bachelor’s Degree - Murdoch University (2008 – 2011, Remote) Focus: security / terrorism / counter-terrorism ## Security Clearance - - Canada: Enhanced Reliability (valid through 2029) - - Australia: Top Secret (lapsed) ## Citizenships 🇦🇺 Australian 🇨🇦 Canadian 🇮🇪 Irish (🇪🇺EU) 🇬🇧 British ## Principles - - Improve the world according to my [Codex Vitae](https://gregology.net/codex/). - - Use AI & data to solve interesting problems. - - Lead great teams; keep learning; avoid being the smartest person in the room. ## Home Office Connection: - - 3Gbps ⬆️⬇️ fiber Internet - - Ubiquiti networking equipment with ethernet to office - - 5G cellular & 8hr UPS redundancy Residence: [Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada](https://goo.gl/maps/EkoPgT1Gz5cgUcTg6) - - 🏢 10mins to co-working spaces - - 🚗 15mins to 401 highway - - 🚊 15mins to Belleville Via Rail station - - ✈️ 2hrs to Toronto Pearson International Airport Timezone: [Eastern Standard Time](https://time.is/ET) (UTC−05:00/UTC-04:00) Workable hours: - - **PST:** 04:00 - 13:05 - - **EST:** 07:00 - 16:05 - - **UTC:** 12:00 - 21:05 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEESYClA57JitMYg1JBb8nUVLEJtZ8FAmp+Dm4ACgkQb8nUVLEJ tZ/8+Q//dhxd5VYeBNT25MpxLtu75sBIvbaxhz+xNaMRVd2Ig0tMOTBv3MMrN+L9 ftwlAphs0r5g2YOZ++B+b2oQlkDoykk8NMl2HA7KSv5KmXy/10ZzuOp472XVZSzp fszvshmfODXczYJJae7xEDEJN8yd7AkRFY8PpIdbN+LQh3BP4RBhJhWabHN7NjIz 2R+8CpiYogaWpjbNTtdHTP+LoLjNewJ1KwekfNDaQ6SB5+PSUBD0shR9Yf9fVdmV u3VwJPAs09ut5kUuPROn3ZPt/OEzxET6NWZDGcIILoa9IsiOHEJY2Yzr8BmH4g+y dFotl/qUl/b4srm4uOLdeEn80zYls4+trfU6SLEiZHUbDoSoVP2GC9AhBcG+WghE kuhdHm1rk9z1zETQKk2gDX2hw0Ebpia+g3H0JVJ3y/hSyrr6dVY2B3HcCz6zbzXf sqWudXepVKOTLjBojrDi4iCX7lr7LE7Ru+CJvTnf8psy5PHUFzRHLXkFg5CT8rYw 25wXq5T6uiBG46XOKuX9SGxnrIX0FKM8+jK6P2HR5ZdPYlB9Nkp0ItPyS9/Breh1 xx7rR3DTXz7uGoRoAqOfWZUWjL9D7YAi3Xj5GXtghOyr/JtZKksnqsI1iLoUjQQu eIg49etgv5KIpe9LiSAYGeUVsvgpP+M/iHjljrRGeBoByLHCxDs= =leuF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----