On this page, I lay out my general interests and experience, as well as some areas where I might be able to help you with your projects.
My Current Interests
My current primary interests are:
- Observability
- Performance Analysis
- Programming Language Design
- Modern Systems Architecture (Cloud, etc)
- Virtual Machines and isolation technologies (e.g. containers)
- Technical Education
- Technology Startups
- Technology for Charities and Non-profits
Bio
Standard Form
Ben Evans is Observability Lead and Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat Runtimes. Previously he was Lead Architect for Instrumentation at New Relic, and co-founded jClarity, a performance tools startup acquired by Microsoft. He has also worked as Chief Architect for Listed Derivatives at Deutsche Bank and as Senior Technical Instructor for Morgan Stanley. He is a Java Champion and served for 6 years on the Java Community Process Executive Committee, helping define new standards for the Java platform.
Ben is the author of seven books, including "The Well-Grounded Java Developer", "Optimizing Java" and the new editions of "Java in a Nutshell". His technical articles are read by thousands of developers every month. Ben is a regular speaker and educator on topics such as the Java platform, Observability, systems architecture, performance and concurrency for companies and conferences all over the world.
My Experience
My career has spanned multiple industries and has taken in many different roles over the last 20+ years, including:
- Senior Principal Engineer & Observability Lead for Runtimes (Red Hat)
- Lead Architect for Instrumentation (New Relic)
- Principal Engineer & Architect for JVM Technologies (New Relic)
- Consulting / Fractional CTO (various startups)
- Successful startup exit to Microsoft (jClarity)
- Co-founder and first CEO (jClarity)
- Java Champion (Community award from Oracle)
- Executive Committee Member (Java Community Process)
- Chief Architect, Listed Derivatives (Deutsche Bank)
- Low-latency FX Trading (Deutsche Bank)
- Senior Technical Instructor (multiple clients, notably Morgan Stanley)
- Performance Testing Engineer - Google’s IPO (Morgan Stanley)
- Author of 6 technical books (O’Reilly, Manning)
Availability
I am a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. Outside of those commitments, I have some time available for other projects (providing they are unrelated to Red Hat’s business). Some of the services I can offer include:
- Consulting CTO
- Confidential code or architecture review
- Technical writing (blogging, article writing) on selected subjects
- Technical due diligence
- Private (or open-source) research projects
- Technical advisor for startups
- Non-exec director for tech startups
- Online mentoring / pairing for CTOs and senior engineers
- Technical training in my areas of expertise - usually delivered online
If that sounds interesting or you might have a project that could be a fit for me, please get in touch with me, using this contact form.
Where did the name "kittylyst" come from?
It started life as a dumb Internet joke in my early 20s - along the lines of "what would you call someone who was a catalyst for change, but smaller and cuter?" - and it just sort of stuck. It has the advantages of being a username that is unlikely to be chosen by anyone else (or by accident) and thus is helpfully unique. I am considerably less small and cute these days.