Robert Kenney

I care about how code becomes a running system, with emphasis on operability, reliability, and performance under real production constraints.

Kubernetes

Getting workloads running and updated in-cluster, learning the scheduler and resource model, basic scaling strategies, and using kubectl when I need to see what’s going wrong.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Built and operated services on GKE, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, and Datastore; debugging production failure modes (retries, backpressure, partial outages), and reasoning about scaling and cost from logs/metrics.

Terraform

I am comfortable with infra-as-code, making repeatable changes instead of manual clicks.

I’m interested in systems that stay correct and predictable under load and failure, and the mechanics that drive performance and reliability.

Query planning and execution

Latency-oriented reasoning about planning choices (ordering, grouping, join strategies) and how they map to physical execution.

Performance and cost

Benchmarking with production-shaped workloads to evaluate trade-offs and validate changes with measurable impact.

Trino, Apache Iceberg, Spark

Benchmarking and migration evaluation work comparing Trino (Iceberg) against BigQuery using production-shaped workloads, with attention to query performance, cost, and correctness trade-offs.

I use these and other tools day-to-day to move quickly and stay organized.

Git

Git for disciplined iteration, code review, and safe parallel development with branches and worktrees.

Claude Code

I use Claude Code as a secondary accelerator for research, prototyping, and drafting design/context docs, then I iterate to a clean, reviewable implementation.

Cursor

I use Cursor for fast investigation and debugging in complex codebases, and for high-leverage refactors where an assistant can speed up navigation and iteration.

I intentionally leaned into “how systems work” coursework to build a rigorous mental model of performance, reliability, and production behavior across operating systems, networks, databases, security, and computer architecture.

Economics strengthened my quantitative toolkit and how I reason about incentives, and strategic interactions in real-world systems.