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David Amin-Priddle

Full-stack engineer

Principal level · Cambridge, UK · remote

I have been building software and the systems behind it for 16 years: the front end, the services behind it, the data stores underneath, and the observability across them.

Mostly C# and TypeScript, with Ruby on Rails, C++, Python, multiple flavours of SQL, VB.Net and Rust as the work has called for them.

I specialise in modernising systems (cloud migrations, architecture changes) and building agentic systems and workflows.

What I work on

Agentic engineering

Agents in products, and agents as a way of working.

In the product

  • An MCP tool standard, and the first tools on it
  • An in-product agent that works in a multi-writer environment
  • A control plane that provisions a VM per agent session and manages its lifecycle

In the work

  • Specs written by hand and attentively; execution unattended against them
  • A second model as an external critic, gating the plan before a human sees it and calling when to abandon an approach
  • Rules that fail the build wherever that is possible, written instruction only where it is not, measured by whether the same violation stops recurring
  • A knowledge base the agents write and I curate

Modernisation

Systems that outgrew their original architecture:

  • VB6 desktop tooling at a research organisation
  • A long-established formatting engine in a paid desktop tool
  • Legacy VB.Net products, modernised while they stayed in daily use
  • The architecture for bringing a software suite to the web

Experience

  • OLI Systems

    Principal engineer

    May - August 2026

    Architecture for a new greenfield web platform at a long-established scientific software company.

  • Shopify

    Senior software engineer

    April 2022 - May 2026

    Core contributor on an internal notifications platform handling tens of millions of merchant communications.

  • Morar Consulting → MIG Global → Savanta

    Senior developer, then technical team lead

    January 2017 - April 2022

    First external developer hire, in a team that grew from one engineer to nineteen over five years.

  • Redgate Software

    Software engineer

    December 2013 - January 2017

    C# desktop development on SQL Prompt, Redgate's IntelliSense tooling for SQL Server.

  • TWI

    Software engineer, then project leader

    October 2010 - December 2013

    Desktop tooling at a research and technology organisation working in materials, corrosion and structural integrity.

Projects

The code is private, so these are the write-ups.

  • A production SaaS platformactive

    An exercise in building a SaaS platform on a budget, with a focus on performance, observability, and operational resilience.

    C# / ASP.NET Core · gRPC & Protobuf · React · TypeScript · PostgreSQL · k3s · Helm

  • The ECSactive

    Systems declare what they touch in their own method signature, and the scheduler works out from that what is allowed to run at the same time.

    C# / .NET · Roslyn analyzers · T4 · Vulkan via Veldrid · SFML

  • Frame budgets and party AIdormant

    A world simulated entirely server-side, on a documented frame budget per subsystem, with characters that act on traits and standing orders rather than a script.

    C# / .NET · Svelte · TypeScript · Protobuf · WebGL2 · Tailwind

  • Simulating a galaxyin progress

    A civilisation aboard a worldship, simulated tick by tick, inside a galaxy that runs on something far cheaper.

    C# / ASP.NET Core · React · SVG · Server-sent events

Writing

All writing →