Penn C. Porterfield
Software Engineer — Systems & Cloud
About
I am a software engineer with a systems bent. For the better part of a decade I have built and
shipped production software end to end, from the application layer down to the cloud it runs on,
first across agencies and venture-backed startups and now through my own consultancy.
Lately most of my attention goes to the lower layers. I spend my off hours in Rust, in the Linux
kernel, and on the small embedded boards where the two meet, trying to understand computers a few
levels further down than the job strictly requires.
Research Interests
- Operating systems and the Linux kernel
- Rust for systems software
- Device drivers and embedded hardware
- Distributed systems
- Cloud infrastructure
Selected Projects
- Rust on the BeaglePlay. A kernel module and SPI display driver written in Rust, carried
from a bare board through bring-up to a running panel.
- monero-multisig. An M-of-N multisig wallet CLI in Rust: key exchange, co-signing, and
transaction submission.
- Google I/O. Production pages for Google's developer conference, built on a headless
Preact and Python stack via Left Field Labs.
- Samwise Development. An independent cloud and software consultancy; full-stack and
infrastructure work at any scale.
Education
- B.S. Network & Cloud Engineering, Western Governors University (in progress)
- Computer Engineering, Penn State University (2009–2013)
- DARPA-funded research, Penn State Applied Research Laboratory (underwater acoustics)
Links