Tony Sala — software engineer for hire.
I build websites, apps and the systems behind them, and I leave them tested.
$ hire --for · pick what you need
what are you building?
A fast, accessible site you can edit yourself, built and hosted where you choose.
1 · what I do
One engineer from the first page to the last server.
all services →- websites →
websites
Fast, accessible sites that pass a contrast check and load on a bad connection. You own the code and the hosting.
- applications →
applications
Web apps and native Android apps with typed domain code and a test suite that says what the product does.
- systems →
systems & infrastructure
APIs, queues and the cluster they run on. GitOps deploys, CI you can read, rollback in one command.
- rescue →
rescue & maintenance
Inherited a codebase nobody dares touch? Tests around it first, then small, reversible changes.
2 · selected work
Built, tested and shipped — not mocked up.
all work →Substation
A live console for a 4-node k3s cluster and a smart home. gRPC agents on every node stream into a Rust API; the Svelte 5 UI updates over WebSockets. Shipped through its own pipeline, with one-command rollback.
- → Android apps: phone, music, Wear OS, Android TV
- → Matter · Thread · Zigbee; voice, local-first with an LLM fallback
- → GitOps with Flux; alerts with quiet hours; a Telegram agent
UEA WAVE
The CMS that replaced the University of East Anglia's Liferay site. Top committer, with about 40% of 8,851 commits: serverless Laravel on AWS, a GraphQL API and Algolia search.
see the work →Fertility-clinic platform
Built from the first commit: treatment cycles, clinic operations and real-time notifications. About 61% of all commits, plus the Terraform infrastructure and a production move to AWS Graviton.
see the work →3 · how I work
-
talk
A call about the problem, not the tech. You get a written summary and a straight answer on whether I'm the right fit.
-
plan
The work cut into small slices that each ship on their own, so you can stop or change course at any point.
-
build in the open
Commits land in your repository from day one, each with its tests. You can click through progress whenever you like.
-
ship & hand over
Deployed with a rollback, written up, and handed over so your team — or the next contractor — can carry on.
4 · principles
- tests first
- Code without tests is not production-ready. I want to know it works, not guess.
- $ make test
- explicit over implicit
- Strict types, value objects, objects that can't exist in an invalid state. Readable beats clever.
- declare(strict_types=1);
- small, reversible steps
- Many small changes, each shippable and each easy to undo. No big-bang releases.
- $ git revert HEAD
- no lock-in
- You own the code, the repository and the infrastructure. Nothing depends on me staying.
- $ chown -R you .
Something to build, or something to rescue?
Tell me what it is and when you need it. I'll reply with honest questions and a plan.
$ curl sala.dev/contact -d "project=…&when=…"