Michael Kingsnorth

30 years building production systems. Founder and CEO of Scramble Technology, a BC-incorporated post-quantum cryptography and secure communications company. I still write the code.

Recent builds: a hybrid post-quantum encryption SDK, an E2EE B2B messaging and RTC video platform on gRPC services, and a hosted privacy-focused email platform I own and operate end to end. Rust, Go, Python, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, with 30 years of Linux underneath.

AI engineering, in production rather than in theory. I run a deployed Claude-based RAG agent handling live inbound enquiries, and I created Contract-Driven Specifications: enforceable boundary contracts used as acceptance criteria for AI-generated code, with property tests bound independently of the model. It cut token usage roughly 80% and removed hallucination-driven build failures from my agentic pipelines. As company-wide AI adoption advisor at Sycle I rolled Claude Code, Cursor and Windsurf workflows across the engineering org and lifted sprint throughput without a quality regression. Anthropic training in Claude Code, MCP and Agent Skills.

Security and privacy are the default, not an upsell. E2EE system design, zero-trust architecture, data sovereignty, and delivery under HIPAA, PCI DSS, UK GDPR and PIPEDA. I have taken dual-use cryptographic products through Canadian export controls myself, which is terrain most vendors outsource.

Before Scramble: led a multi-team engineering and DevOps organization for a HIPAA-regulated healthcare SaaS platform, including a zero-downtime migration of legacy infrastructure and tenant databases to AWS behind Cloudflare. Built a web application engineering department from scratch for a UK security vendor. Consulted for UCL and the BBC, and was recruited onto BBC permanent staff after solving their PostgreSQL replication problem.

What I take on: backend and distributed systems build work, delivery rescue and legacy modernization including Perl and pre-cloud estates, security and privacy architecture reviews, AI adoption for engineering teams, and fractional or interim CTO engagements at 1 to 3 days a week.

How I work: scope before estimate, defined success criteria, tests that mean something, and direct pushback when I think you are wrong. Remote, North Vancouver, dual UK/Canadian, so I cover North American and European hours.