I've spent the last 3 years shipping backend systems that handle real load - and I've learned that the best code is the code your future self won't hate. Right now, I'm deep in my MSc program, diving into reinforcement learning and exploring how to make AI/ML systems reliable, observable, and actually useful.
I gravitate toward messy problems: unclear requirements, legacy codebases, systems that need to scale yesterday. Give me an ambiguous spec and I'll give you a stable API, a data pipeline that doesn't drop records, and a deployment process that won't wake you up at 3am.
Outside of code, I'm usually hiking, making music, or figuring out how to get better at the violin (slowly).