Hi! 👋 I'm Matthew -
I've been consulting in systems development for over 25 years, with clients from startups to giants. Being a generalist with some specializations, I'm used to working multiple cross-functional roles, usually as a technical or strategy lead.
You can find some career highlights below, or you can reach me using any of the following -
QWRK is my consultancy and development agency, which provides software consulting, research, and bespoke solutions to clients that range from indie startups to global enterprises
NHLS - Implemented their Lab Quality Management System for a leading medical/pathology service, improving quality and reducing errors organization wide
USAID PEPFAR - Developed device policy controls for embedded laptop systems distributed to HIV/AIDS testing clinics across Africa, enabling service delivery and reducing fraud and losses
Popcorn Training - I developed a custom LMS for Popcorn Training's security awareness training platform,
ez-chat - A startup B2B customer messaging platform
Replaced legacy platforms, and set practices, architecture and technical direction for the new platform. Implemented a complete IAM architecture. I gained valuable insights into developing and operating complex IoT systems at scale here.
Led redevelopment of a modern kubernetes-based microservices platform to replace several legacy M&A platforms, massively reducing post-acquisition costs
Managed the technical direction of multiple project teams
Set best practices, including process methods
Created CI/CD processes
Specialised in Identity and Access Management, and developed our core authentication and authorization system, with MFA, FIDO, a secure token server, multi-tenant, and OAuth/OpenID support. This enabled advanced enterprise sales needs
Ran workshops and training sessions for teams, on existing and upcoming tools and practices. Onboarded legacy teams into new standards
I spearheaded design and development of a system for the canonical storage of intermediary information (GIS), and a corresponding master-data management programme to integrate dozens of disparate business systems and utilities providing and making use of that data.
Business Analysis and technical requirements documentation for the University of the Western Cape’s rewrite of their Marks Administration System
As Technical Lead, my duties included initial analysis (technical and business), system architecture, requirements and specifications documentation, product support, system design & development. Our primary client was Vodacom, one of the largest mobile network operators in South Africa. I was involved in the development of a number of systems for WASPs (Wireless Application Service Providers), vendors, and Vodacom themselves.
I practice continuous learning, I'm working on the following areas:
Rust - I'm working through some courses to familiarise myself
Go - I'm working on implementing some services in Go
Discourse - I've taken a deep dive into the community software, and created some smaller plugins for our platform
Bitcoin and Lightning Network payment systems
Pulumi - for an alternate to Terraform for infrastructure as code
NixOS - for Linux, and Nix for package management - I'm currently running NixOS on my personal laptop
Astro - I've been using Astro to build sites, and have created a few small sites with it
Podman - replacing Docker for container management
Hyprland - a modern tile-based desktop environment in Wayland