Have Code, Will Travel

Hi, I’m Christopher Swenson. I thought I would try an experiment where I posted a bit about myself and solicited job recommendations or contracting for what I work on next.

I’ve recently left my full-time position as a technology fellow at Capital One, and I am looking for new work, either full-time or part-time as a contractor.

Here is a little about me:

• Software developer for 10 years or so — Google, Capital One, Simple, US government, startups, and freelance.
• Usually backend development, sometimes devops, frontend, mobile, and embedded.
• Also spent years as a researcher and mathematician: I have a Ph.D in computer science, and worked in high-performance computing (HPC), security, and cryptography.

If you would like to see a sample of some of my work, you can here:

• sort.h: a somewhat popular high-performance C sorting library.
• BeeWare Batavia: a reference implementation of Python in JavaScript for the BeeWare project.
• Modern Cryptanalysis, a book I wrote in 2008
• Some talks I have given can be seen on my site.

I’m happy to send a detailed résumé and discuss more, and you can view a smaller version of my résumé here.

As far as what I am looking for in a company, these are a must:

• Lots of development work. I like to write code. I am happy to talk to people and manage a team, but I’m only happy if I am coding at least 70% of the time.
• Work–Life balance. I don’t want to work myself to death in the next few years.
• Remote-friendly or based in Portland, OR. I’m based in Portland, OR, and I have no intention of moving. I love it here. I’ve successfully worked remotely for a number of companies over several years, and I have a formula that works well for me (for instance, I rent my own office outside my home), but it only works if the company I’m working with understands this.
• Working with a diverse set of people. Software is people, and homogeneous teams build bland products.
• Open source work is welcomed: I love working with the open source community. Conferences and speaking are supported: I like going to conferences, running conferences, and speaking at conferences.
• Good health benefits.
• I am happy to travel a fairly arbitrary amount of the time.

Some nice-to-haves:

• Opportunities for research and publishing.
• Flexible hours.

If this sounds like you, please contact me at swenson@swenson.io.

Thanks!

Copyright 2014–2017 Christopher Swenson