I run Ascia Technologies, a one-person consultancy I started in 2006. Over the years I’ve moved between freelance work and full-time roles, sometimes both at once. Either way, I embed directly with teams to fix, build, and secure their systems. No account managers, no layers of indirection; just me and your problem. I’ve worked across public and private sectors in industries including energy, manufacturing, e-commerce, municipal government, education, and healthcare.
Most of my contracts are under NDA, so I can’t name names. What I can do is describe the kinds of work I take on.
Legacy Rescue & Platform Migrations
Sometimes a codebase or a piece of infrastructure has been neglected and needs someone willing to get in there and sort it out. I’ve performed major framework upgrades on aging applications, migrated platforms between hosting providers with near-zero downtime, untangled systems that had accrued years of technical debt, and put safety guardrails on systems that went to production without them. Mercenary janitor work.
Infrastructure & DevOps
I containerize applications, build CI/CD pipelines, automate server provisioning, and migrate teams off of fragile, hand-maintained infrastructure. Almost all of this work is on Linux, which I’ve used daily since the early ’90s. I’ve moved workloads between cloud providers, built reproducible developer environments for distributed teams, and migrated task orchestration systems from one platform to another with minimal disruption.
Tools I reach for: Ansible, Terraform, OpenTofu, Packer, Docker, Podman, GitHub Actions, Proxmox, AWS, Azure.
Backend Development
I build and maintain backend services, data pipelines, and APIs, usually in Python or Ruby. I’ve built async file upload systems, search infrastructure, data enrichment pipelines, workflow orchestration, and various glue services that connect systems that weren’t designed to talk to each other. I’ve also built serverless log processing microservices and open source ERP integration libraries for high volume e-commerce platforms.
Tools I reach for: Python, Ruby, Flask, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Redis, S3.
Industrial Networks
I’ve advised on and maintained Linux servers, VPN tunnels, SCADA systems, and networks for clients in the energy and manufacturing sectors with strict regulatory constraints. The work is hands-on: monitoring infrastructure, managing security controls, deploying and maintaining equipment, and keeping critical systems running. I also build tooling and automation to reduce manual overhead for the teams that depend on these systems.
Security
I perform vulnerability assessments and penetration testing for networks, applications, and physical spaces. I’ve done code and binary audits for clients in sensitive industries, hardened border defenses, built custom intrusion-detection scripts, and developed integrations between SIEM platforms. I’ve also delivered security awareness training for both technical and non-technical audiences and made minor contributions to the Ronin security toolkit.
Tools I reach for: nmap, Ronin, Wireshark, Zeek, Ansible, Terraform, a good tension wrench.
Network Security Tooling
I’ve built custom VM and container images for network security monitoring appliances, targeting multiple deployment formats including VM, embedded, enterprise, and cloud environments. I’ve packaged Zeek-based analysis tools with Packer and Docker, maintained open source protocol analyzers, and developed small Wireshark plugins for packet diagnostics. I’ve also served as a security liaison between open source network monitoring communities and commercial engineering teams.
Tools I reach for: Zeek, Wireshark, Packer, Docker, Python, Lua.
How I Work
I prefer direct, ongoing relationships with the teams I help. I’m comfortable jumping into messy systems, unfamiliar codebases, and ambiguous problem spaces. I ask a lot of questions, I communicate clearly, and I try to leave things better than I found them. My blog is where I write about what I’m working on and thinking about. My resume has the full timeline.
If you think I can help, send me an email.