Staff Software Engineer
I make complex software systems easier to understand and safer to change.
I am a Staff Software Engineer rooted in hands-on software engineering. I work at multiple levels of the system, from code and runtime behavior through business and organizational boundaries. I work with and across teams of individual contributors to make difficult systems clearer, safer to change, and more useful to the business.
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01 / Architecture Retrospectives
Proof that the work changes outcomes.
Each case study starts with a problem people recognize, explains the useful intervention, and shows the outcome that made the next decision easier.
Monolith Modernization
System Cartography: Mapping a 10-Year Monolith
Conceived the cartography strategy to map 10 years of undocumented Rails dependencies, identified and mapped seven lending funnels with a tracking initiative, and enabled squads to deliver without downtime.
Read Case StudyDatabase Engineering & Compliance
Database Archaeology: Safe Multi-Table PII Purge Engine
Architected a 5-phase zero-downtime deletion strategy and led the enablement team in executing lock-timeout budgets and WAL replication throttling across production PostgreSQL clusters.
Read Case StudyEnterprise Rails Resilience
Restoring a Hidden 4% of Customer Applications
Diagnosed and resolved a silent 4% customer application drop caused by oversized Rails session cookies, defensive middleware, and a migration to DynamoDB session storage.
Read Case StudyFintech State Machines
Instant Money: Real-Time Debit Disbursement Architecture
Designed two-phase state verification gates and idempotent ledger webhooks to safely disburse funds in real time without uncommitted read risks.
Read Case StudyPanoramic View
Start with what the system actually does.
Panoramic View is my practical framework for legacy modernization: map the business process, trace what the software actually does across runtime boundaries, and resolve the differences before changing anything.
The user of the system might be a customer, an employee, an automated process, or an AI agent. The same questions apply.
Logs, traces, diagrams, documentation, and AI-assisted analysis are inputs to the map. They are not substitutes for understanding the system.
- What does the business expect to happen?
- What does the software actually do?
- Where do those views agree, diverge, or remain unknown?
Inventory → Evaluate → Address
Make the next safe improvement visible.
When no one person has the whole picture, delivery slows and risk hides in the gaps. I connect business goals, system behavior, evidence, and ownership so teams can decide together and move with confidence.
The shape of the work
One practice. Four ways it appears.
I build, repair, explain, and preserve systems. The projects below are different expressions of the same practice.
flowchart LR
M["Mike Hall | Staff Software Engineer"] --> B[Build]
M --> R[Repair]
M --> E[Explain]
M --> P[Preserve]
B --> B1[Ruby and Rails]
B --> B2[Products and tools]
R --> R1[Legacy systems]
R --> R2[Safer change]
E --> E1[Diagrams and standards]
E --> E2[Observability and teaching]
P --> P1[Communities]
P --> P2[UGtastic and oral history]
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classDef path fill:#e6f4f1,stroke:#0f766e,color:#1e232a
class M mike
class B,R,E,P,B1,B2,R1,R2,E1,E2,P1,P2 path03 / Public work
Documenting the craft over time.
I have written technical guides, spoken at conferences, founded grassroots engineering communities (SCMC, Geekfest@OMF), and recorded oral histories of modern software development. The current index contains 184 interviews across 212 recorded assets.