Derek Armstrong - Software Engineer · AI · Infrastructure

I build it. I explain it. I own it end to end.

I design and build payment platforms that process millions of daily transactions — the ones that have to work at 3am whether I’m awake or not.

10+ years writing code, making technical decisions, and mentoring teams through complex migrations. Currently building local LLM inference clusters and agentic workflows that actually work in production.

Open to Staff or Principal Engineer / Architect roles — hands-on technical lead, still building. Remote, flexible schedule.

Featured Projects
Highly Available AI Inference Cluster featured image

Highly Available AI Inference Cluster

What this proves: Resilience — enterprise-grade AI infrastructure at a single operator's desk. A custom routing plane in front of a three-server GPU fleet that switches models and …

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NCR Voyix Pay — Worldpay Payment Processing Integration featured image

NCR Voyix Pay — Worldpay Payment Processing Integration

I've built mission-critical systems where failure isn't an option.

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Fraud Detection System Rewrite featured image

Fraud Detection System Rewrite

I find expensive problems and solve them with engineering — 10,000% faster, millions saved

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Proxmox Utility Toolkit featured image

Proxmox Utility Toolkit

I ship tools publicly and document my work

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Blog
Qwen3.8 27B on Dual RTX 3090s: A vLLM Field Report featured image

Qwen3.8 27B on Dual RTX 3090s: A vLLM Field Report

Three days into making Qwen3.8 27B my daily local coding driver on dual 3090s — the hybrid linear-attention architecture, an OOM that masqueraded as a backend error, and what the …

Derek Armstrong - Software Engineer · AI · Infrastructure
Derek Armstrong
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I Built an LLM Traffic Router for My Homelab — Here is What Happened featured image

I Built an LLM Traffic Router for My Homelab — Here is What Happened

I hooked up multiple local models behind a single proxy that routes traffic by complexity. Here is what I found deploying it on a cheap Intel GPU.

Derek Armstrong - Software Engineer · AI · Infrastructure
Derek Armstrong
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clean-term: A Minimal Oh My Zsh Theme That Actually Works Everywhere featured image

clean-term: A Minimal Oh My Zsh Theme That Actually Works Everywhere

Every terminal theme I tried either broke across fonts or added visual noise I did not need. So I built a 14-line ASCII-safe Oh My Zsh theme that works anywhere.

Derek Armstrong - Software Engineer · AI · Infrastructure
Derek Armstrong
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How I Bridged CLI AI Agents to Apple's Walled Garden featured image

How I Bridged CLI AI Agents to Apple's Walled Garden

Apple apps are locked down with no APIs, but SQLite local databases and AppleScript let CLI AI agents bridge Reminders, Notes, Calendar, Mail and more — no cloud, no API keys, just …

Derek Armstrong - Software Engineer · AI · Infrastructure
Derek Armstrong
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Bookshelf Highlights
Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design featured image

Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design

Uncle Bob reveals timeless architecture rules that eliminate framework dependencies, maximize testability, and enable systems to evolve gracefully across decades.

By Robert C. Martin

TECH
9
LEAD
8
GROW
7
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Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software featured image

Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software

The foundational text teaching platform architects to model complex business domains through patterns that unite technical implementation with strategic organizational design.

By Eric Evans

TECH
9
LEAD
8
GROW
7
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The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery featured image

The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery

Timeless principles for software craftsmanship that transform good programmers into pragmatic engineers who consistently deliver flexible, maintainable code.

By David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

TECH
9
LEAD
8
GROW
9
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The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change featured image

The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change

Master technical leadership without management authority by understanding role expectations, strategic thinking, and making everyone around you better.

By Tanya Reilly

TECH
8
LEAD
9
GROW
7
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