Well hello again everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve written a new post here. I have been meaning to get back on here and at least get back to work on dEngine this year but unfortunately time got away from me and my personal life was spent on other endeavors. But now I feel the need to jump back on and get back to it.

Career Updates

As many may know I have been a Principal Engineer for Elsevier for some time now. Since August 22, 2022 actually. Well unfortunately I was part of a meeting last week where I was notified that my role had been eliminated due to some organizational changes. I’m not quite sure how much I can speak on at the moment, but I was notified that I can now speak on this. I will say that I don’t hold anything against Elsevier, they have been a fantastic employer and even throughout this process they are not screwing me over and are doing their best to assist me through this process. Our Director and VP have been very caring and I can absolutely tell that it’s nothing personal. While it is a little disheartening as I wanted to remain at this employer for a long time, I understand that is just how business is at times.

Due to this though I have had to get back to work on my resume and get my LinkedIn profile updated since I’ve neglected both throughout my tenure here. Thankfully I feel like I’ve managed to get my resume back up to date, and will be add a new page to my site that includes the details as well.

Reflection

Looking back at my role as a Principal Engineer with Elsevier, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really liked my collegues, all were very bright and driven individuals. I also really enjoyed the projects that I worked on. I came on at probably the best time, we were starting our cloud migration project. Moving everything from a datacenter in North Andover, MA to AWS.

I was able to lead key initiatives within that migration. It was a complex and challenging endeavor to say the least. But it allowed me to solve some intricate problems and utilize my expertise in AWS, distributed systems, and more! More recently, I was given the incredible opportunity to spearhead some of the first AI initiatives within our department. This work solidified my passion in AI. That experience was invaluable.

So what’s next?

Well, now that this chapter is closing I’m choosing to view this in a positive aspect. Rather than this being just a layoff I’m viewing this as an opportunity to further my career goals. I’m thankful that I’ve been spending a lot of time lately to explore the use and development of agentic AI systems and processes. I was lucky enough to spearhead some of the AI initiatives within our department. Due to this and the increased responsibilities of this position I feel as though I am adequately situated to continue to forward in a Staff, Principal, or Director role and as such that’s what I’m going to continue looking for.

I have begun by taking on some smaller personal projects such as standing up my systems-design repository where I am tasking myself with various system design exercises, and I plan on doing some more work by pursuing the following certifications:

While the majority of these I feel fully confident in passing due to my current work experience I may need a little extra study time on the Devops Engineer Professional exam. But that’s ok :) Throughout this I also plan on renewing my Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals certification.

Personal Projects

On the project front, I’m excited to finally dedicate more time to dEngine. For those who might not know, dEngine is a personal passion project of mine—a 2D game engine written entirely in C++. It was a fantastic learning experience, and I’m now considering undertaking the challenge of porting it or rewriting it completely in Rust to modernize the codebase and explore Rust’s performance and safety features.

I also plan to clean up my home-net repository, which will primarily be simply addressing the issues I’ve already identified with it. So overall nothing major or special there.

Let’s Connect

I am actively looking for my next opportunity and am targeting roles at the Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Director level, with a focus on AI, platform engineering, and cloud architecture. I’m passionate about building high-performing teams and solving the complex technical challenges that drive business innovation.

If you are working on interesting problems in these areas or know of a role that might be a good fit, I would love to connect. You can find my updated resume on my Resume Page and can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to whatever comes next!