Software Engineering
Windows applications, systems programming, privileged services, internal tooling, integrations, and engineering-focused utilities.
Independent engineering lab & technical consultancy
Engineering without
artificial boundaries.
Practical engineering for complex systems - from low-level hardware interfaces and embedded firmware to networking, security architecture, automation, and secure application development. Shipped work you can read the source of.
FirmwareNetworkingSecurityAutomationSystems
v2.8.8
Latest Reaper release
6
Supported router models
78
Documented UI screens
Open
Public repositories
01 / Capabilities
Across the stack.
Focused on outcomes.
Disciplines overlap in real systems. A firmware problem becomes a networking problem becomes a security problem. The work follows the problem wherever it leads.
Embedded & Firmware
Embedded Linux, router firmware, kernel and driver work, hardware interfaces, platform integration, and low-level debugging.
Network Engineering
Routing, wireless systems, traffic management and QoS, diagnostics, VPN technologies, DNS, and network segmentation.
Security Engineering
Attack-surface reduction, privilege separation, secure architecture, vulnerability analysis, hardening, and defensive tooling.
Automation & QA
Test automation, validation frameworks, CI/CD workflows, audit logging, repeatable environments, and quality systems.
Systems Integration
Connecting software, hardware, networks, and operations into systems that are observable, maintainable, and resilient.
02 / How to work together
Scoped engagements,
not open-ended retainers.
Most work starts as one of the following. Each has a defined scope, a written deliverable, and a clear finish line - so you know what you are buying before it starts.
Security & Hardening Review
A structured review of an embedded device, network edge, or Windows service: where the attack surface actually is, what is reachable, and what to fix first.
- Attack-surface map
- Prioritised findings
- Remediation guidance
Typical shape · 1–3 weeks · written report
Firmware & Embedded Work
Custom firmware builds, patch series, driver and kernel-adjacent work, platform bring-up, and performance tuning on constrained hardware.
- Reproducible build pipeline
- Documented patch series
- Hardware validation
Typical shape · project-scoped
Test Automation Systems
Turning fragile, manual validation into repeatable feedback loops: automation frameworks, CI workflows, audit trails, and diagnostics that survive contact with real teams.
- Framework & harness
- CI integration
- Operator documentation
Typical shape · project-scoped
Network Design & Review
Segmentation, routing, wireless design, VPN topology, and traffic policy - designed so the people who run it can diagnose it.
- Topology & segmentation plan
- Policy design
- Diagnostic runbooks
Typical shape · 1–2 weeks
Secure Windows Services
Privileged services and brokers done properly: privilege separation, authenticated IPC, scoped capabilities, rate limiting, and audit logging.
- Privilege-separated design
- Authenticated IPC contract
- Threat model & audit trail
Typical shape · project-scoped
Web & Site Remediation
Fast, static-first sites and recovery work for compromised deployments - rebuilt clean, hardened headers, measured performance, and left maintainable.
- Rebuild or remediation
- Performance & SEO pass
- Hardened hosting
Typical shape · 1–4 weeks
03 / Selected work
Built to solve
real constraints.
Every project below exists because something needed to work differently. Where the source is public, it is linked - the code is part of the argument.
AM-Reaper
A security-hardened, de-clouded, open-source Asuswrt-Merlin firmware fork for six ASUS Wi-Fi 7 BE-series routers. Built around local control, network visibility, reduced attack surface, and keeping hardware acceleration in the data path instead of trading performance for control. Every public build is compiled in a GitHub Actions clean room - no secrets, no control servers, no telemetry.
- RT-BE86U / BE88U / BE96U / GT-BE98 / GT-BE98 Pro + RT-BE92U (experimental)
- Warden threat & geo firewall
- Gatekeeper device approval
- Object-based native firewall
- Hardware-accelerated QoS
- Public clean-room builds & provenance
QAAI Engine
A vendor-independent tool that makes QA test-case authoring faster and more accurate without requiring the author to intimately know the application under test. Works against any Jira + XRay deployment, pairing a browser extension with a governed AI proxy so organisations keep control of what leaves their perimeter.
- Browser extension (Edge + Chrome)
- Cloudflare Workers governance proxy
- 14-point sanitizer enforced at each boundary
- Signed, by-actor audit logging
- Identity-gated access control
- Built toward SOC 2 / ISO 27001 alignment
Sensor Broker
A hardened Windows sensor broker that replaces the long-standing driver → daemon → HTTP → plugin chain used for hardware monitoring. Instead of handing clients arbitrary ring-0 access, the broker exposes a named, read-only sensor catalogue over an authenticated named pipe - so consumers never scan, never supply addresses, and never need administrator rights.
- Named-pipe IPC with DACL enforcement
- Peer-process identity + Authenticode signer pinning
- Scoped capability tokens & rate limiting
- Narrow-IOCTL, HVCI-compatible SMBus driver
- Intel i801 + AMD FCH support
- No client-side bus scanning, by design
Client Web Delivery
Static-first marketing sites built and deployed for small businesses - including a Florida construction contractor - with an emphasis on speed, crawlability, and long-term maintainability rather than a heavy CMS that rots in eighteen months.
- Hand-built static delivery
- Automated image pipelines
- Recurring Lighthouse audits
- Hardened headers & caching
- Crawler- and agent-readable by design
Register Broker
A focused Windows utility for controlled registry operations - designed around clear privilege boundaries, predictable behaviour, and auditability rather than convenience.
- Privilege-separated architecture
- Minimal, explicit interface
- Defensive systems programming
04 / Who you are working with
I build systems
I'd be willing to defend.
I studied programming in college, then served in the military - which is where the habits that define this practice came from: verify before you trust it, follow the procedure, and never push something forward because it is convenient.
Engineering stayed a serious discipline rather than a job title for a long time, which meant the work was always driven by an actual problem rather than a sprint board. Unbounded Engineering is where that becomes a practice: firmware, networks, security, and the unglamorous systems work that holds the rest together.
What you get is a direct line to the person doing the work. No account manager, no handoff to a junior team, no discovery phase that bills for six weeks before anything is built. If something is a bad idea, I will say so before you pay for it.
- Based
- Florida, USA
- Background
- Military · Programming · Hardware · Troubleshooting
- Practice
- Solo, direct engagement
- Source
- Public where possible
05 / Engineering philosophy
The best solution respects the whole system.
Good engineering is not about applying a favourite technology. It is about understanding constraints, removing accidental complexity, and making choices that hold up under real conditions - including the condition where someone else has to maintain it.
- 01
Understand before abstracting
Start at the real boundary: hardware, protocol, process, or person.
- 02
Prefer explicit systems
Clear interfaces, observable behaviour, and failure modes that can be reasoned about.
- 03
Design for the operator
A system is only successful when people can deploy, diagnose, and maintain it.
- 04
Earn complexity
Use sophisticated tools when the problem requires them - not as decoration.
- 05
Reduce what you expose
Narrow interfaces, least privilege, and no capability granted without a reason.
06 / Open engineering
The work should
speak for itself.
Selected tools, experiments, and systems are developed in the open. Source code is both a deliverable and a record of engineering thought - including the parts that were harder than they looked.
Explore on GitHub
$ git log --oneline --all
fetching public activity…
_
07 / Contact
Have a difficult engineering problem?
Tell me what you are building, what is not working, and what a practical path forward looks like. I read every message myself and will tell you honestly if it is not a good fit.
contact@unbounded-engineering.com
github.com/TheUnboundDeveloper
Unbounded Engineering LLC · Florida, USA