We solve hard problems
We are a software consulting firm specializing in systems software engineering. Our team consists exclusively of senior software engineers and executives (10+ years) with experience in operating systems, network protocols, applied cryptography, compiler and language design, numerics, hardware engineering, full-stack web development, and much more.
Our Work
Our team has a shared background through working together on Urbit, a novel networked operating system. Together, we have shepherded several research projects from conception through production deployment, including network protocols, programming languages, memory allocators, and operating system internals.
We are particularly well versed in problems of determinism, systems architecture, applied cryptography, embedded systems, and distributed systems.
Principals
Theodore has deep expertise in managing technical projects, including a dozen-person team developing an operating system and network protocol, as Chief Technical Officer of the Urbit Foundation. Previous experience includes robotics, distributed systems, data engineering, full-stack web development, and embedded systems. He was a YC founder in 2011, and holds a degree in physics from MIT.
Josh has been leading software organizations for over a decade. He has a knack for organizing teams of developers. Most recently he was the Executive Director of the Urbit Foundation, where he worked closely with Theodore on Urbit’s most ambitious core development projects. Previously Josh was the CTO and cofounder of Starcity (YC S16, acquired by Common in 2021).
Team
Luke is a 3rd-generation programmer specializing in cryptography, networking protocols, and performance optimization. Since dropping out of college to co-found Sia, a leading cloud storage cryptocurrency, he has worked across all layers of the stack, from ASIC mining firmware to JavaScript frontends; TCP multiplexing to distributed consensus; vectorized assembly to novel Merkle tree research, and more. He treats programming as an end in itself, and outside of work he enjoys tinkering with a new language designed for competitive programming.
~lagrev-nocfep works on problems in applied computation in traditional engineering and software engineering. Most recently, he has worked on numerical calculations and problems in floating-point determinism. He has studied chemical and nuclear engineering, the latter culminating in a doctorate from the University of Illinois. He has served as a member of the Computer Science faculty at the U of I, and more recently has been the director of developer experience at the Urbit Foundation.
~mopfel-winrux's previous experience includes processor development and positions at NASA and Lockheed Martin Research & Development. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech.
~barter-simsum's previous experience includes implementing a novel fault-tolerant persistent memory allocator for Urbit, where he also used pointer compression to expand the addressable memory in a 32-bit language interpreter. Before Urbit, ~barter-simsum worked at Microsoft on optimizing storage drivers in the Windows kernel. ~barter-simsum holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Miami University.