mike@systems — boot.log

Software engineer, Backend & Systems

Systems-minded backend engineer: comfortable from the socket layer up to the REST API.

man mike

About

NAME
Mike — software engineer focused on backend development and systems engineering.
DESCRIPTION
I like understanding what's actually happening below the abstraction — memory layout, event loops, the wire protocol. Most of my recent work has been building a Redis clone from scratch: a RESP parser, a key-value store with TTL/expiry, and a networking layer, all in C++. That same instinct for low-level correctness shows up in a client/server encryption system built over raw TCP sockets, and on the backend side, I design REST APIs and data-backed services — from a hybrid search engine with embeddings and reranking to a Django + PostgreSQL application deployed end to end.
GOAL
Looking for backend or systems engineering roles where correctness, performance, and reliability actually matter — services and infrastructure people depend on, not just ship and forget.
STACK
C++CPythonGoCMakePostgreSQLDjangoREST APIsDockerLinux

ps aux --user=mike

Projects

~/projects/redis-clone active

Redis Clone (C++)

A from-scratch reimplementation of Redis's core: a RESP protocol parser, an in-memory key-value store with TTL/expiry via lazy deletion, and a socket-based server handling concurrent clients.

C++20CMake
~/projects/rag-search-engine active

RAG Search Engine

A retrieval-augmented search engine supporting keyword, semantic, and hybrid search — sentence-transformer embeddings with cosine similarity, BM25 combined with semantic scores via weighted interpolation and reciprocal rank fusion, and Gemini-powered query expansion, rewriting, and spell-checking, exposed through a CLI.

PythonSentence TransformersBM25Gemini APICLI
~/projects/secure-password-manager stable

Secure Password Manager

A full-stack password manager where the backend never sees plaintext vault data — the React frontend derives an encryption key from the master password via the Web Crypto API and encrypts everything client-side before it ever reaches the Django REST API. Backed by PostgreSQL, with email and TOTP multi-factor authentication.

ReactDjangoDjango REST FrameworkPostgreSQLWeb Crypto API

mail -s "hello" mike

Contact