I’m Jake Paine — a programmer and software engineer working across product development, Linux infrastructure, networks, security and developer tooling. I care about the whole system, but I still genuinely enjoy sitting down and writing the thing.
Personal tools, operator software and product work. A preference for small systems with clear boundaries over architecture astronautics.
Probably the clearest picture of how I design systems: I architect and orchestrate Caduceus, a Rust daemon that turns labelled GitHub issues into bounded development runs and pull requests. Barkley Assistant handles implementation, while scheduling, state, worktrees and timeouts stay outside the non-deterministic AI worker.
A lightweight OpenCode plugin for spec-driven development. Specialist models investigate, plan, design, implement and independently review changes while OpenSpec remains the durable source of truth. The TypeScript layer stays deliberately boring.
A modern grooming-business platform built from the perspective of an actual small operator: scheduling, clients, services, reminders, payments and the boring operational details that decide whether software is useful in the real world.
My first foray into programming professionally: an in-house web system for Fairfax School that delivered dynamic content to screens around the site. The code is old. The important bit is that people used it — and I never really stopped building after that.
“If it compiles in Rust, it probably works.”
Probably.
I started with Ubuntu 4.10 and once spent my free time trying to get Halo running through Cedega. Since then I’ve bounced through Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora, built networks, datacentres, deployment systems and plenty of software on top of them. These days Fedora is home.
A fast-moving product company where I have room to craft things toward the end vision rather than simply push them out of the door. My scope spans hands-on software development, infrastructure, operations and security.
I helped orchestrate, design, plan and implement our bare-metal datacentres and the networks inside them. Our servers run Rocky Linux, workstations run Fedora, and I introduced Ansible so infrastructure is managed as code rather than tribal knowledge and brave SSH sessions.
I’ve also helped lead the move to Git-based workflows and work on software used by clients including Premier Inn, Richer Sounds, Post Office and Iceland. I manage much of the infrastructure/security surface and I’m currently particularly interested in AI security and using AI tooling safely.
A fast-paced city-centre agency: demanding timelines, long hours, hard crunches and a huge number of reps. It was intense, occasionally ridiculous, and excellent experience.
I worked with clients including Trustpilot and Apteco, with Apteco becoming an extensive long-term bespoke development relationship. I also led the company’s move from FTP/SVN to Git, improving the development workflow and — mercifully — reducing the amount of SVN in my life. While I was there, I also completed Harvard’s CS50x online course.
Where programming first became part of the day job. I built internal web systems and C# desktop applications, including ProxySwitch, which went on to be used by a number of local schools across education.
This was also where the infrastructure side properly took hold: custom networks, Windows and Unix/Linux systems, plus CCNA and Microsoft XP service professional certifications. The Digital Signage repo survives from this era as archaeological evidence.
I prefer programming to talking about programming, but good engineering means caring about what happens before and after the compiler.
Open source is my default instinct: Linux, open tooling, self-hosted infrastructure where it makes sense, and open-weight models. I like being able to inspect, own and understand the stack I depend on.
It isn’t a checklist bolted on at the end. I think about secrets, networks, permissions, dependencies, failure modes and now AI-tool boundaries as part of the design.
OpenCode is my harness and Hermes is my agent. I use Zed with its AI layer switched off. The agent can implement; I still architect the work, read the code and genuinely enjoy writing stuff myself.
I’ve led FTP/SVN → Git migrations at two companies and introduced infrastructure-as-code at Instiller. Improving how software gets built is part of building software.
PHP gets real products shipped. Go makes backend services pleasantly boring. Rust makes correctness feel tangible. Percona is still my favourite way to run MySQL. I reserve the right to change my mind when the evidence gets better.