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.

📄 Read Full Résumé (ATS) 🎯 5 Target Role Archetypes 🏛️ Technical Conversation Archive

Choose your way in

Start with the question you brought.

You do not need to understand the whole archive before finding something useful. Choose the path that best matches why you are here.

I am hiring or evaluating a technical leader Start with the résumé, then inspect the production case studies behind it. Résumé and proof I need help with a difficult platform transition See how an advisory engagement turns uncertainty into a practical next step. Engagements I want to understand how Mike thinks Begin with Panoramic View, the method for connecting business intent to system behavior. Explore the method I am here for the history Browse talks, interviews, communities, and the evidence preserved around them. Enter the archive

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]
  classDef mike fill:#f7efe1,stroke:#b45309,color:#1e232a,stroke-width:2px
  classDef path fill:#e6f4f1,stroke:#0f766e,color:#1e232a
  class M mike
  class B,R,E,P,B1,B2,R1,R2,E1,E2,P1,P2 path
Hiring & Credentials Hub

Looking for Mike's Résumé & Tailored Archetypes?

View Full Canonical Résumé (ATS) →

Access the structured career history, verified factual claims, ATS plain-text exports, or explore tailored role archetypes with 1-page executive briefs:

🎯 Principal Systems Architect Financial Monolith Modernization 🛠️ Staff Platform Lead Developer Enablement & Workspaces 📊 Observability & Resilience Enterprise Telemetry & OpenTelemetry 🤖 Founding Staff Engineer AI Systems & Autonomous Agents 🧰 Senior Rails Engineer Production Ruby & Rails Craftsmanship

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.

Panoramic 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

02 / 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

How we mapped 10 years of undocumented Rails dependencies, decoupled seven lending funnels, and created a living 4D architecture map without stalling active delivery.

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Database Engineering & Compliance

Database Archaeology: Safe Multi-Table PII Purge Engine

Engineered a 5-phase zero-downtime deletion engine with strict lock-timeout budgets and WAL replication lag throttling across high-throughput PostgreSQL production clusters.

Read Case Study

Enterprise 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.

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Fintech 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.

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03 / Evaluation Paths

Start wherever you have time.

  1. 01 Full Résumé & ATS Exports Canonical ATS plain-text parse, structured JSON-LD credentials, and a focused career history.
  2. 02 5 Tailored Role Archetypes Targeted resumes for Principal Systems Architect, Senior Rails Contractor, Platform Lead, Observability Specialist, and Founding AI Engineer.
  3. 03 Technical Oral History Archive Searchable transcripts and practitioner interviews with software pioneers (Uncle Bob Martin, DHH, Rich Hickey, Corey Haines) and community organizers.

04 / 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.