Michal Piotrowski

Senior Software Engineer — Backend, Distributed Systems & Systems Programming

Senior software engineer with 15+ years of experience building and maintaining production software across the full development lifecycle. My experience spans requirements analysis, technical design, backend and frontend development, API design, integrations, databases, automated testing, code review, CI/CD, deployment, infrastructure setup, observability, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and ongoing maintenance. Over the last five years, I have focused primarily on Rust, building production services and applications across healthcare, AI, developer tools, databases, and distributed systems.

Since 2010, I have worked as an independent software engineer through my own software consultancy, working with clients across multiple industries and adapting to a wide range of technical and business domains. I have delivered 40+ software projects for 30+ clients, ranging from short-term development engagements to longer-term projects where I became responsible for significant parts of the software and its ongoing evolution.

Alongside client work, I develop and maintain my own software projects, currently focusing on AI applications, developer tools, databases, and modern backend systems. I use these projects to explore new technologies, development approaches, and AI-assisted workflows while continuing to deepen my understanding through technical books, RFCs, documentation, and source-code analysis.

I increasingly incorporate AI-assisted engineering workflows into my development practice, using local and hosted language models for technical planning, implementation, code and architecture review, security and performance auditing, troubleshooting, documentation, testing and QA, and development workflow improvement. I use AI as a source of analysis, feedback, and automation while keeping engineering judgment and responsibility with the human engineer, who remains accountable for technical decisions, verification, and the resulting software.

Selected Projects:

• Metric Space — Octopus — Rust backend platform for AI-driven enterprise applications github.com/metric-space-ai/octopus_server
  Designed and developed production backend architecture, API services, LLM integrations, and supporting infrastructure. Worked with multiple LLM providers and built reliable application workflows around asynchronous backend services.
• alex-db — Rust key-value database github.com/asyncfncom/alex-db
  Designed and developed a key-value database supporting both in-memory operation and filesystem persistence, with a focus on storage, data structures, and backend systems.
• Code Cleaner Wrasse — Rust developer tool using local LLMs github.com/practicalrs/ccw
  Developed a command-line developer tool for source-code analysis, code review, and development workflow automation using locally hosted language models.