Open to new workServices

Software, data & infrastructure,engineered to drive results.

I help teams and businesses ship software, make sense of their data, map the world, and run reliable, secure infrastructure: 52 ways I can help across9 disciplines. Every engagement is tailored, so here's the full picture, how I work, and how we can start.

  • 52Distinct services
  • 9Disciplines
  • E2EIdea to production
  • 24hTypical first reply

Process

How an engagement runs

A calm, repeatable path from a fuzzy problem to software your team can own.

  1. 01

    Discover

    We start with the problem, not the tech. I map goals, constraints, data, and success metrics, then scope the smallest thing that proves the value.

  2. 02

    Architect

    A pragmatic technical plan: the stack, data model, and infrastructure, sized to your team and budget, with the trade-offs written down instead of assumed.

  3. 03

    Build

    Tight, visible iterations shipped behind version control and CI. You see working software early and often, with tests and verification built in, not bolted on.

  4. 04

    Ship

    Reproducible deploys on infrastructure as code, with observability, alerting, and hardening in place so the launch is boring, in the best possible way.

  5. 05

    Support

    Documentation, runbooks, and hands-on handover so your team can operate and extend everything long after the engagement ends.

Capabilities

The full service catalog

Grouped by discipline. Mix and match, everything below is delivered end to end.

01

Software Development

8 services

Applications built end to end, from the interface a user touches to the services and data behind it.

  • Web Application Development

    Responsive, high-performance web apps with modern frameworks: React, TypeScript, Astro, and Next.js on the front end, Python (FastAPI, Flask, Django) and Node on the back end, built to scale and maintained end to end.

  • Frontend Engineering & UI

    Accessible, fast, polished interfaces: component libraries and design systems, data-dense dashboards, interactive charts, and pixel-accurate builds from Figma with performance and SEO baked in.

  • Backend & API Development

    Robust REST and GraphQL APIs, authentication and authorization (JWT, OAuth), background jobs, and integrations, delivered as clean, documented, well-tested services in Python and Node that other systems can rely on.

  • Mobile App Development

    Cross-platform mobile applications in Flutter: one Dart codebase, native performance, delivered to iOS and Android, including offline-capable field data collection and sync.

  • Desktop & Cross-Platform Apps

    Native-feeling desktop applications with Electron and Qt: internal tools, data utilities, and productivity apps that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux from a shared codebase.

  • Complex Calculations & Modeling

    Custom calculation engines, simulations, optimization routines, and statistical or numerical models that turn intricate rules and formulas into fast, correct, thoroughly tested code with verification built in.

  • Progressive Web & Realtime Apps

    Installable progressive web apps and realtime experiences with WebSockets and offline support, so your product feels instant and keeps working even on a shaky connection.

  • Browser Extensions & Automation

    Cross-browser extensions and userscripts that add features, automate workflows, and integrate with your existing tools directly inside Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

02

Data & Analytics

7 services

Turning large, messy datasets into clean pipelines, clear visuals, and decisions you can act on.

  • Data Analysis & Reporting

    Custom Python analysis for data processing, cleaning, statistical weighting, and reporting that turns millions of records into clear findings, and populates polished, client-ready deliverables.

  • ETL Pipelines & Automation

    Robust, repeatable ETL with Pandas, SQLAlchemy, and PostgreSQL, automating multi-step manual workflows into scheduled pipelines, with concurrency and async where it counts for speed.

  • Dashboards & Data Visualization

    Interactive dashboards and reports with Plotly, Power BI, Grafana, and custom web front ends, giving real-time reporting that makes the state of your data obvious at a glance.

  • Machine Learning & NLP

    Applied machine learning and natural-language processing: classification, forecasting, sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and text mining with scikit-learn, PyTorch, spaCy, and Hugging Face.

  • Web Scraping & Data Collection

    Reliable, respectful data collection at scale: scrapers, API integrations, and ingestion pipelines that gather, clean, and structure data from across the web into usable datasets.

  • Business Intelligence & Superset

    Self-serve business intelligence with Apache Superset and Metabase: connected data sources, governed metrics, and interactive dashboards that let your whole team explore data without writing SQL.

  • Data Warehousing & Modeling

    Analytics-ready data warehouses and dimensional models with PostgreSQL, DuckDB, and columnar stores, so reporting stays fast, consistent, and easy to reason about as it grows.

03

Counter-UAS & Defense Technology

7 services

Anti-drone systems that detect, identify, track, and help defeat unmanned aircraft, from raw sensor feeds to an operator’s command-and-control picture.

  • RF Detection & Spectrum Monitoring

    Software-defined-radio detection of drone control and video links with HackRF, RTL-SDR, and KrakenSDR: demodulating Remote ID, fingerprinting protocols like OcuSync and Lightbridge, and direction-finding the operator, not just the aircraft.

  • Multi-Sensor Fusion & Tracking

    Fusing RF, radar, acoustic, and EO/IR camera feeds into unified tracks with Kalman and particle filtering and track correlation, so a single drone stays a single track across every sensor on the site.

  • AI Drone Detection & Classification

    Computer-vision and RF-signature models (YOLO, DeepSORT, custom CNNs) that separate drones from birds and crewed aircraft, classify make and model, estimate payload, and drive false-alarm rates down to something an operator can trust.

  • Counter-UAS Command & Control

    Real-time C2 dashboards and a common operating picture: live map, track history, threat scoring, geofenced alerting, and full audit logging, engineered to run at the edge and keep working when the network drops.

  • RemoteID & ADS-B Airspace Awareness

    Ingesting Remote ID broadcasts, ADS-B, and airspace data to build a live picture of cooperative and non-cooperative traffic, flagging incursions into geofenced zones and protected airspace the moment they happen.

  • Sensor Integration & Edge Deployment

    Integrating COTS detection hardware, radars, and cameras over MAVLink, MQTT, and serial, packaged to run on rugged, low-power edge compute in the field with offline-first storage and sync back to a central node.

  • Drone Threat Intelligence

    A living catalog of UAS platforms, RF signatures, and observed tactics that feeds detection tuning and after-action analysis, so the system keeps pace with how the threat actually evolves.

04

Geospatial, OSINT & Intelligence

8 services

Location-aware analysis and all-source intelligence platforms that turn scattered open-source signals into situational awareness.

  • OSINT Collection & Automation

    Respectful, large-scale collection from social media, news, forums, public records, and the dark web: scheduled crawlers, API integrations, and enrichment pipelines that keep sources fresh, deduplicated, and structured for analysis.

  • Entity Resolution & Link Analysis

    Resolving people, places, organizations, and events across messy sources into a single graph, then surfacing hidden connections through interactive link-analysis and network views built for analysts to explore.

  • GEOINT & Imagery Analysis

    Geospatial intelligence from satellite and aerial imagery, AIS and ADS-B tracks, and terrain data: change detection, pattern-of-life, and movement analysis that shows not just where things are, but how they behave over time.

  • Intelligence Fusion Platforms

    All-source platforms that merge OSINT, GEOINT, and event feeds into a mapped, searchable, time-aware picture, with tasking, alerting, confidence scoring, and analyst-grade dashboards for monitoring and reporting.

  • Domain Awareness & Monitoring

    Maritime, air, and border domain-awareness dashboards, including work aimed at the Arctic and Canadian sovereignty, that fuse tracking feeds and flag anomalies against normal patterns of life.

  • GIS & Spatial Analysis

    Spatial analysis, routing, and origin–destination modeling with PostGIS, GeoPandas, Shapely, GDAL, ArcGIS, and QGIS, from raw coordinates to insight about how people and things move.

  • Interactive Web Mapping

    Fast, custom web maps with Leaflet, Mapbox, MapLibre, and deck.gl: layered visualizations, real-time track overlays, geocoding, and location search embedded directly into your web and mobile applications.

  • Threat Monitoring & Early Warning

    Automated monitoring of events, keywords, and geofences with prioritized, deduplicated alerting, so an emerging situation surfaces early and in context instead of hours after the fact.

05

AI & Machine Learning

5 services

Practical AI built on open-source and self-hosted models, applied to real problems rather than hype.

  • LLM & Generative AI Apps

    Applications built on large language models: chat assistants, content generation, summarization, and structured extraction, using Claude, OpenAI, or open-source models served on your own infrastructure.

  • RAG & Semantic Search

    Retrieval-augmented generation and semantic search over your own documents and data, using embeddings and vector databases like pgvector, Chroma, and Pinecone for accurate, grounded answers.

  • AI Agents & Workflow Automation

    Multi-step, tool-using AI agents that automate research, triage, and back-office workflows, orchestrated with frameworks like LangChain and LangGraph and wired into your existing systems.

  • Computer Vision & Document AI

    Image classification, object detection, OCR, and document understanding with OpenCV, PyTorch, and modern vision models, turning images and scans into structured, searchable data.

  • Model Fine-Tuning & Self-Hosting

    Fine-tuning, evaluating, and self-hosting open-source models with Ollama and vLLM, giving you private, cost-controlled AI that keeps sensitive data entirely under your control.

06

Cloud, Infrastructure & DevOps

7 services

Reproducible, observable, cost-aware infrastructure, and the pipelines that ship to it.

  • Cloud & Infrastructure as Code

    Reproducible infrastructure with Terraform across AWS, Azure, and VPS providers: provisioning, hardening, cost optimization, and ongoing management of the environments your product runs on.

  • DevOps & CI/CD

    Automated build, test, and deploy pipelines with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, containerization with Docker, orchestration with Kubernetes, and configuration management with Ansible.

  • Observability & Monitoring

    Datadog, Prometheus, and Grafana dashboards, metrics, logs, traces, and alerting so you catch problems before your users do, plus meaningful cost and performance visibility.

  • Server & Database Administration

    Setup, tuning, and maintenance of Linux servers and Nginx/Apache, kept reliable, secure, and performant, with backups, VPN access, and monitoring in place.

  • Database Design & Optimization

    Schema design, indexing, and query tuning for PostgreSQL/PostGIS, MySQL/MariaDB, SQL Server, and SQLite, building models that stay fast and correct as your data grows.

  • Kubernetes & Container Orchestration

    Containerized workloads on Kubernetes and lightweight distributions like k3s: Helm charts, ingress, autoscaling, and GitOps deployments with Argo CD for repeatable, self-healing infrastructure.

  • Self-Hosting & Homelab Setup

    Design and deployment of self-hosted, open-source stacks with Docker, Proxmox, and reverse proxies, giving you control, privacy, and predictable costs instead of per-seat SaaS bills.

07

Security

2 services

Secure-by-design development and hardened infrastructure, informed by hands-on offensive and defensive research.

  • Cyber Security Consulting

    Security reviews, code review, and secure-by-design development, informed by hands-on research with honeypots and real-world attacker tactics in a self-hosted lab.

  • Hardening & Network Security

    Systems hardening, network segmentation, firewalling (pfSense), intrusion detection (Suricata), VPNs (WireGuard), and DNS filtering that shrink your attack surface and keep it small.

08

Consulting & Advisory

5 services

A second set of eyes on architecture, tooling, and technical direction.

  • Technical Consulting & Architecture

    Architecture reviews, technology selection, code audits, and hands-on advisory that help teams choose the right tools, untangle legacy systems, and set a technical direction that scales.

  • Automation & Internal Tooling

    Custom scripts, bots, and internal tools that remove repetitive manual work, from data wrangling and report generation to integrations that stitch your systems together.

  • Open-Source Process Transformation

    Replacing costly proprietary tools with self-hosted open-source alternatives for time tracking, project management, analysis, and reporting, cutting licensing spend while keeping your data in-house.

  • Technical Training & Documentation

    Clear documentation, runbooks, and hands-on training that help your team understand, operate, and extend the systems I build long after the engagement ends.

  • Quality Assurance & Test Automation

    Test planning, automated regression suites, CI integration, and exploratory testing for data pipelines and web applications, catching logical flaws before they reach production or client deliverables.

09

Research Operations

3 services

Survey platforms, field collection, and reproducible research methodology at scale.

  • Survey Platform Development

    SurveyJS and custom web questionnaires with complex branching, validation, quota management, and admin tooling for large market and transportation studies.

  • Field Operations Dashboards

    Real-time visibility into interviewer progress, quota fills, data-quality metrics, and sync status for distributed field teams.

  • Reproducible Research Pipelines

    Versioned ETL, weighting engines, and analysis notebooks with audit trails designed for peer review and client methodology scrutiny.

Case studies

Problems solved in production

Representative engagements across research, SaaS, counter-UAS R&D, OSINT, and security: challenge, approach, and measurable outcomes.

Data Engineering

40× faster survey ETL at million-record scale

R.A. Malatest & Associates · 2022 – 2023

North America-scale travel surveys generated millions of trip records, but the legacy ETL pipeline took hours per run, blocked analyst iteration, and duplicated manual validation steps across studies.

Approach

  • Profiled the existing pipeline and identified row-by-row database writes and redundant validation as primary bottlenecks.
  • Rebuilt ingestion with SQLAlchemy bulk operations, async I/O for network-bound steps, and set-based validation in PostgreSQL.
  • Introduced staging tables and composite indexes aligned to join keys used in spatial assignment and weighting.
  • Added row-count gates and golden-file regression checks so speed improvements never traded away correctness.

Results

  • Pipeline runtime reduced by up to 40× on representative study volumes.
  • Analysts could re-run ETL multiple times per day during methodology reviews.
  • Standardized patterns reused across subsequent large mobility studies.
  • Python
  • SQLAlchemy
  • PostgreSQL
  • PostGIS
  • Pandas

Business Intelligence

Open-source replacement for proprietary SaaS stack

R.A. Malatest & Associates · 2024 – present

Escalating per-seat licensing, data locked in vendor silos, and reporting bottlenecks slowed a research organization that needed self-serve analytics and data sovereignty over client information.

Approach

  • Inventoried workflows for time tracking, project management, analysis, and client reporting.
  • Mapped each to self-hosted open-source equivalents and piloted with one team before company-wide rollout.
  • Deployed Apache Superset with governed metrics, connected PostgreSQL sources, and role-based access.
  • Delivered training, documentation, and integration scripts so adoption survived past launch week.

Results

  • Predictable infrastructure costs instead of escalating SaaS fees.
  • Client and operational data retained in-house with full export control.
  • Self-serve dashboards across teams that previously waited on manual reports.
  • Apache Superset
  • PostgreSQL
  • Docker
  • Python
  • Nginx

Mobile / Research Ops

Offline-capable field collection for large surveys

R.A. Malatest & Associates · 2023 – present

Interviewers collected data in low-connectivity environments (homes, transit hubs, remote communities) where online-only tools failed and paper fallback was slow and error-prone.

Approach

  • Built cross-platform Flutter apps with local SQLite storage mirroring central schema validation rules.
  • Implemented background sync queues that replay submissions when connectivity returns, with conflict handling for assignment IDs.
  • Paired mobile collection with SurveyJS web forms for tablet workflows with complex branching logic.
  • Python ingestion pipelines reconcile submissions, flag quality issues, and load PostgreSQL for analysis.

Results

  • Reliable data capture in the field without paper fallback.
  • Consistent validation across web and mobile channels.
  • Near-real-time progress visibility for study managers when sync is active.
  • Flutter
  • SurveyJS
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLite

Software / Cloud

Full-stack SaaS delivery with IaC and observability

Cinareo Solutions · Present

A production SaaS platform needed continuous feature delivery across React and Next.js front ends, MySQL-backed services, and multi-cloud infrastructure, with reliability visible before customers report issues.

Approach

  • Contribute to full-stack features: data-dense UIs, API routes, and calculation logic behind product surfaces.
  • Maintain Terraform modules across AWS and Linode for reproducible environments.
  • Expand Datadog coverage: service dashboards, log pipelines, and alerts tied to user-impacting paths.
  • Participate in code review and secure development practices across application and infrastructure changes.

Results

  • Shipping production features on a live platform with version-controlled infrastructure.
  • Improved observability and faster incident detection through structured monitoring.
  • Right-sized cloud resources contributing to cost and reliability improvements.
  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • MySQL
  • Terraform
  • AWS
  • Datadog

Counter-UAS

Counter-UAS fusion from sensor to operator picture

Independent R&D · Ongoing

Small drones are hard to detect and harder to track consistently. Off-the-shelf sensors each see part of the problem; operators need one fused picture with trustworthy alerts.

Approach

  • Built modular detection nodes: SDR for RF, camera inference with YOLO, acoustic feature extraction, and MQTT-based event transport.
  • Implemented track fusion with gating, Kalman updates, and threat scoring that consumes classification confidence.
  • Developed edge-first C2 dashboard with deck.gl map layers, WebSocket updates, geofencing, and audit logging.
  • Recorded sensor replays for regression testing after every detection or fusion tuning change.

Results

  • Sub-two-second detection-to-alert paths in lab and field tests.
  • Single common operating picture across four fused sensor modalities.
  • Geofenced alerting with full audit trail for after-action review.
  • Python
  • GNU Radio
  • PyTorch
  • React
  • deck.gl
  • FastAPI
  • MQTT

OSINT / Intelligence

OSINT platform from collection to link analysis

Independent R&D · Ongoing

Analysts drown in open-source volume spread across formats, languages, and reliabilities. The hard problem is fusion: resolving entities and surfacing connections across time and space.

Approach

  • Scheduled collectors with deduplication and enrichment pipelines into PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch.
  • Entity resolution graph in Neo4j with confidence-scored edges and interactive link-analysis views.
  • Geospatial timeline with time-scrubbing replay and map context from PostGIS.
  • Keyword and geofence monitors with deduplicated, prioritized alerting.

Results

  • One searchable picture across dozens of source types instead of dozens of browser tabs.
  • Link-analysis graphs exposing relationships behind events, not just raw mentions.
  • Early-warning alerts with geographic and temporal context.
  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • PostgreSQL
  • Neo4j
  • Elasticsearch
  • Leaflet

OSINT / Geospatial

Archiving travel advisories as queryable history

Independent / Open Source · Ongoing

Government travel advisories update in place with no public history: trends and the events behind risk-level shifts vanish on each page refresh.

Approach

  • Scheduled ingestion archives every advisory change per country and region as a time series.
  • Interactive map and timeline visualize escalations and de-escalations across 210+ countries.
  • NLP correlation links advisory changes to nearby news and world events for analyst context.

Results

  • Complete queryable advisory history that would otherwise be lost.
  • At-a-glance global view of risk trajectory, not point-in-time status.
  • Reusable pattern for any institutional feed that overwrites instead of versioning.
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • PostGIS
  • Leaflet
  • spaCy

Working together

Ways to engage

Pick the shape that fits, or tell me the problem and I'll suggest one.

  • Project

    A scoped build with a clear outcome and timeline, from a focused MVP to a full platform. Fixed milestones, delivered end to end.

    Best for shipping something new

  • Ongoing

    A steady share of my time each month for teams that need continued development, data work, and infrastructure to keep moving.

    Best for continuous delivery

  • Advisory

    Architecture reviews, technology selection, and code audits when you mainly need a second set of expert eyes on direction.

    Best for a technical gut-check

Not sure where to start?

Tell me about the problem you're trying to solve and I'll point you in the right direction, no pressure, no jargon.

Contact me today