Roland Sharp

Agentic engineer. I build software by directing AI coding agents: I set the architecture, write the specs and tests that keep the agents honest, review every diff, and debug what they get wrong. This year I've shipped terminal tools with 180+ GitHub stars: a CRT oscilloscope in Nim (108★), sshmail, an encrypted messaging hub for AI agents (41★, live at sshmail.dev), and a terminal tarot reader with local-LLM readings (30★). Also building aitherLang, a live-coded audio language that compiles to native code in milliseconds. Before agents, 5+ years shipping production Node.js/TypeScript backends for exchanges and blockchain companies. Co-founder of JSON Resume (4.2K GitHub stars).

Experience

Agentic Engineer Jan 2022 — Present

Independent

Designing and shipping open-source tools with Claude Code as the implementation partner: I own the architecture, the evaluation and the decisions; the agent writes most of the code, and I read and test all of it. terminal-oscilloscope (108★): CRT phosphor oscilloscope for the terminal in Nim, 200 KB binary, live audio capture on its own thread. sshmail (41★, 5 forks): encrypted messaging hub over SSH for humans and AI agents, in Go, with SSH-key identity, a TUI served over SSH and a JSON API; deployed at sshmail.dev. tarot (30★): terminal tarot reader in Go with pixel-art cards and readings from a local LLM via Ollama. aitherLang: a language for real-time audio in Nim; patches transpile to C, compile in-process with TCC in milliseconds and hot-reload without losing state, and a background cc -O2 rebuild makes heavy patches up to 5x cheaper. Diagnosed a code-generation bug where nested filter calls corrupted each other's state, fixed it, and pinned it with sample-exact regression tests. Research: Resonance, a neural network built from the damped harmonic oscillator equation, entered in OpenAI's Parameter Golf challenge.

Node.js Developer & Data Engineer Apr 2021 — Nov 2021

Sifchain

Built the TypeScript client SDK and public data API for a decentralized exchange. Complex aggregate SQL queries, Ethereum and Cosmos JavaScript APIs, AWS Lambda deployment.

Senior Node.js Developer Apr 2018 — Mar 2019

Blockbid

Maintained and built out the API gateway for an Australian cryptocurrency exchange. Built the initial market-starting arbitrage bot. TypeScript, GraphQL, TypeORM, Redis, JWT and TOTP multi-factor authentication.

Systems Engineer Sep 2017 — Apr 2018

Everledger

Built a zero-knowledge query service for a consortium blockchain — the first company to use Hyperledger in production. Homomorphic encryption, private blockchain for immutable audit logs. 15+ Docker containers orchestrated with Docker Compose.

Node.js Developer May 2016 — Aug 2017

Adimeo

Built the server for laplateforme.com, France's largest building construction hardware retailer. Mentored PHP developers on modern JavaScript. Node.js, Express.js, Mocha.js, MySQL.

Node.js Developer Dec 2014 — Feb 2016

Lighthouse

Built the main REST API for beacon location tracking on Android devices. Node.js, Express, MongoDB, Mongoose.

Junior Node.js Developer May 2013 — Nov 2014

Payment Network International

Geo-monitoring applications using Node.js. Built modules for meteorological and geological data processing. Maintained 500+ end-to-end and unit tests.

Co-founder & Original CLI Author

JSON Resume

Co-founded the open-source initiative to create a JSON-based standard for resumes. Built the original CLI tool and registry server. 4.2K GitHub stars. The standard is still actively maintained and widely used.

Skills

Agentic Engineering

Claude CodeDirecting coding agents through multi-week projectsSpecs and tests as guardrails for agent outputReviewing and verifying AI-generated codeInfrastructure for AI agents (sshmail)

Languages

NimGoCOCamlTypeScriptJavaScriptPython

Systems

Compilers and code generation (C via TCC)Real-time audioCUDA / cuBLASSSH servers and TUIsLinux

AI / ML

Transformer architecturePhysics-grounded neural architecturesSignal processingReinforcement learningNeurosymbolic systemsPyTorch

Backend

Node.jsREST and GraphQL APIsPostgreSQLSQLiteRedisDockerAWS Lambda

Projects

terminal-oscilloscope

Terminal oscilloscope with CRT phosphor physics in Nim: Y-T and X-Y modes, beam bloom and decay trails, braille rendering at 4x resolution, live audio capture via dlopen'd libav. Zero dependencies, 200 KB binary. 108 GitHub stars.

sshmail

Encrypted messaging hub over SSH for humans and AI agents. SSH-key identity, Discord-like TUI served over SSH, JSON API, E2E encryption via age. Architected by me, implemented in Go with Claude Code. Live at sshmail.dev. 41 GitHub stars, 5 forks.

Terminal Tarot

Terminal tarot reader in Go with pixel-art cards, shuffle animations and readings from a small local LLM via Ollama; also served over SSH. 30 GitHub stars.

aitherLang

Live-coded audio language in Nim: one function, evaluated 48,000 times a second. Patches compile to native code in milliseconds via TCC and hot-reload without losing state; a background cc -O2 rebuild makes heavy patches up to 5x cheaper. Built with Claude Code on a Pinebook Pro.

Resonance

Neural network built from the damped harmonic oscillator equation: raw signals drive a learnable oscillator bank, no tokenizer. Entered in OpenAI's Parameter Golf challenge as a novel architecture: 1.34 bits per byte in 11.2 MB, community-reviewed as compliant, built on $20 of compute.

Vidya

Neurosymbolic language model (transformer + Forth constraints), taken from OCaml to a 103M-parameter Nim/CUDA build on one RTX 3060.

JSON Resume

Open-source resume standard. Co-founded the project, built the original CLI tool and registry server. 4.2K GitHub stars.

Blog

Technical writing on agentic engineering, AI research and systems programming: 30+ posts on building transformers, reinforcement learning, audio languages and agent infrastructure with coding agents.

Education

University of Queensland Jan 2011 — Dec 2012

Bachelor of Science and Art

Linear AlgebraStatic and Dynamic ForcesIntroduction to Electrical EngineeringCritical Reasoning and Formal LogicIntroduction to NeuroscienceKant and European PhilosophyPhilosophy of ArtIntroduction to PhilosophyIntroduction to StatisticsWriting for Engineers

Languages

English — Native speaker

References

I've known Roland for many years, and had the privilege of working closely with him at Blockbid, an Australian crypto currency exchange. Together we built out an API gateway which fronted a distributed system with Kubenetes on AWS. We used Open API v3 to define a schema for our public facing API, we built a custom schema validator which filtered out unexpected requests and responses improving security and consistency. We used JWT's to authenticate users on different microservices by passing them around with associated jobs in RabbitMQ. On top of this we managed to also support GraphQL and namely our own Apollo client frontend. He is excellent at Javascript/Typescript, writes readable, terse, documented and modular code.

— Thomas Davis