20+
years building production systems
10+
years as a digital nomad
2×
Web3 Foundation grants
6+
programming languages
Career Journey
Two Decades of Engineering
From game engines to enterprise platforms, blockchain infrastructure to AI-augmented tooling — a consistent thread of event-driven, test-first systems thinking.
Game Development
C++ · Multiplayer · Systems Programming
Built a complete multiplayer 2D game from scratch — BSP trees for visibility, UDP networking with dead reckoning, event-stream demo recording (event sourcing before the term existed).
Enterprise Web
Drupal · SQL · AIG · NAB · Flight Centre
Built and maintained enterprise Drupal platforms for Fortune 500 companies. Contributed patches to Drupal Core, ran the Berlin Drupal community for three years, and spoke at conferences across Europe.
Blockchain · Rust
Acuity Index · Substrate · Web3 Foundation
Moved to Vietnam and authored Acuity Index — a config-driven event indexer for Substrate blockchains. Awarded two Web3 Foundation grants and Kusama Treasury funding. Pure Rust with an embedded database and resumable span tracking.
AI-Augmented Development
Agentic Tools · tai · AI Workflows
Pioneering AI-agentic development with Claude Code, Pi, OpenCode, and Hermes Agent. Building tai, a custom long-running agent in Rust that emphasises read-only planning, invariant enforcement, and full test coverage.
Expertise
Core Skills & Technologies
Notable Work
Key Projects
A selection of open-source work, funded projects, and tools that define Jonathan's engineering approach.
Acuity Index
Config-driven event indexer for Substrate blockchains. Resumable indexing with span tracking, concurrent backfill and live-head catch-up with out-of-order resolution.
tai
Custom long-running AI agent in Rust. Implements read-only planning phase, AGENTS.md invariant enforcement, and automated test-first workflows for high-quality code generation.
Drupal Core
Core contributor to one of the largest open-source CMS platforms. Built enterprise-grade solutions for AIG, NAB, and Flight Centre. Led the Berlin Drupal community for three years.
Background
Jonathan started his career building a complete multiplayer 2D game in C++ — implementing BSP trees, UDP networking with dead reckoning, and event-stream demo recording and playback, an early form of event sourcing. This foundation in systems programming shaped his approach to software: rigorous, deterministic, and pragmatic.
Over the following decade he built and maintained enterprise Drupal platforms for AIG, NAB, and Flight Centre — working with large SQL databases, complex migrations, and payment integrations. He contributed patches to Drupal Core, ran the Berlin Drupal community for three years, and spoke at conferences across Europe.
In 2015 he moved to Vietnam and transitioned into blockchain and Rust development. He authored Acuity Index, a config-driven event indexer for Substrate blockchains, which received two Web3 Foundation grants and Kusama Treasury funding. The project features resumable indexing with span tracking, concurrent backfill and live-head catch-up with out-of-order resolution, and an embedded database — all in safe Rust.
Today Jonathan focuses on AI-augmented development, using agentic tools daily to deliver high-quality software faster. The throughline across his entire career is event-driven architecture, test-first engineering, and building systems that work reliably in production.
AI-Augmented Development
Jonathan was an early adopter of AI-agentic development tools. He uses Claude Code, Pi, OpenCode, and Hermes Agent for feature development, refactoring, and testing — and is building tai, a custom long-running agent in Rust. His workflows emphasise:
- Read-only planning — exploring codebases and producing a plan before writing a single line of code.
- Invariant enforcement — AGENTS.md files that encode structural rules the AI must follow.
- Full test coverage — every project runs a complete test suite, often AI-generated and human-reviewed, ensuring refactors land safely.
He has demonstrated that AI-augmented workflows can dramatically accelerate delivery velocity without sacrificing quality — often 2–3× faster than traditional solo development while maintaining or improving test coverage.
Personal
Jonathan has been a digital nomad in Vietnam since 2015, based in Da Nang. He is an async-first communicator comfortable working across European and Southeast Asian time zones. Outside of code he enjoys road cycling, yoga, swing dancing, and exploring the central highlands by motorbike.
If you would like to discuss a project or explore how Jonathan's experience applies to your business, get in touch.
Principles
Engineering Philosophy
The values that guide every system Jonathan builds — from game engines to AI agents.
Event-Driven
Systems built around event streams are inherently decoupled, auditable, and resumable — from game replays to blockchain indexers.
Test-First
Tests are not an afterthought — they define the contract. Every project has comprehensive, human-reviewed test coverage that makes refactoring safe.
Pragmatic
The best system is the one that ships and stays reliable. Pragmatism over purity — but never at the expense of correctness in critical paths.
Deterministic
Given the same inputs, the same outputs — always. Determinism in architecture enables replay, debugging, and confidence in production.
Let's build something together
Whether you need AI strategy, a custom software system, or an automation pipeline — Jonathan brings deep technical experience and a practical, delivery-focused approach.
Prefer email? jbrown@acuity.network