Icelander with thirty years of computer experience in search of new experiences. Twenty years experience with software development, much of it web-related, but also low-level. Cognitive Science education, with hands-on research experience. Considerable writing experience. Inquisitive, analytical, searching for interesting projects and people.
I am also a board member of Alda, a non-profit think-tank in Iceland focused on democracy.
Employment
- Automattic Inc., June 2016—April 2025. Senior Platform Engineer; Quality Engineering & Maintenance, Continous Integration and Deployment, Security and code reviews.
Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com, JetPack, WooCommerce & WordPress VIP — I worked in the WordPress VIP division, serving enterprise customers. My tenure can be split into three roles:- VIP Senior Platform Engineer — January 2022—April 2025. Internal quality improvement work on the enterprise hosting platform. Aims included increasing productivity, simplification of architecture and easier maintainence. The work required coordination with tens of other people in different roles. This involved everything from introducing check-lists to merging large applications. The role included day-to-day operations of the platform.
- VIP Senior Engineer — August 2017—December 2021. Developed, set up and operated the continuous integration (CI) platform underpinning code-reviews for enterprise customers, including Fortune 500 companies. The CI aids deployment of performant and secure code (public documentation). The basic code is open source; I was the lead engineer. — I also created a utility to scan PHP/WordPress code repositories for performance/compatibility issues. — In this role, I also worked on setting up continous deployment (CD) platform for enterprise clients.
- VIP Wrangler — June 2016—July 2017. I adviced and assisted enterprise clients running very large WordPress sites on the enterprise platform, mostly pertaining to stability, security and expert debugging.
- Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, January 2016—April 2016. Consultant; Drupal specialist
- University of Iceland, The Icelandic Web of Science, June 2007—June 2016. Software engineer, database management, security.
- Major re-engineering of the website and database; lead maintainence work and new theme development for the site three times.
- Kosmos & Kaos ehf.,
May 2011—June 2014. Head software engineer, oversaw all IT operations and solutions. Internal Drupal specialist, focusing on
back-end engineering, problem-solving as well as optimization. Example projects worked on:
- www.harpa.is: Harpa is a major concert hall and conference centre in Reykjavík which opened in 2011. Created event system, managed all API integrations.
- www.hhi.is: Lottery, funding buildings for the University of Iceland. Wrote all API integrations, including subscription and payment section, information on draws, etc. Caching optimization.
- Krítík Helgarblað, February 2010—February 2011. Software Engineer.
- University of Iceland, Department of Nursing, June 2010—August 2010. Research assistant. Calculations on the frequency of interruptions in nursing; created tables, graphs.
- University of Iceland, Department of Psychology, January 2010—May 2010. Teaching assistant. Assisted with teaching in a course on sensation and perception.
- University of Iceland, Department of psychology, June 2009—August 2009. Research assistant & Programming, E-Prime, statistics.
- FRISK Software International, October 2004—August 2006. Software Engineer.
- Tölvun ehf., Westman Islands, 2001—2004. Systems administrator and Software Engineer.
Education
- MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences, University College London, 2014—2015.
- Title of thesis: A Subtle Reminder Does Not Cause Updating of Episodic Memories.
- Advisor: David Shanks
- BS Psychology (Hons), University of Iceland, 2006—2010 (180 ECTS).
- Title of thesis: The word-length effect in Icelandic in light of Baddeley’s theory of working memory.
- Advisor: Jörgen L. Pind.
Interests and knowledge
- Languages: Icelandic (native), English (full professional proficiency).
- Engineering Experience: PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C, Perl, R, E-Prime (VisualBasic), Pascal, shell scripting.
- Automated testing frameworks: PHPUnit, Jest, Playwright, python-unittest, Selenium, Behat. – Unit, integration and E2E tests.
- Operating systems: Linux, Macos, Windows, MS-DOS.
- Databases: MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL.
- MVCs: Django, Laravel
- Content Management Systems: WordPress, Drupal
- RESTful frameworks: WordPress REST API, Django REST framework
- Continuous integration/deployment: TeamCity, Jenkins, GitHub Actions
- Virtualization/Containerization systems: Virtualbox, Docker, Vagrant
- Also: Smarty, LaTeX, nginx, Apache, git, SVN, BIND, Sendmail, Samba, Cygwin, GnuPG/PGP and many more
- Statistics / methodology: Excellent knowledge of statistics and methodology. Much experience with SPPS and R.