Andrew Helwer
Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAndrew Helwer is a senior software engineer with 11 years of experience building scalable distributed systems and applying formal methods, particularly as a TLA+ core developer. He has a strong track record at Microsoft across Azure networking, storage, and quantum systems, and recently operated an independent consultancy focused on formal specification, static analysis, and SMT tooling. His open-source work includes substantive TLA+ specifications and improvements to tree-sitter and nvim-treesitter, reflecting deep expertise in language tooling and verification of concurrent protocols. Known for pragmatic engineering outcomes—such as multi-million dollar storage savings and a formally specified checkpoint protocol—he balances rigorous correctness with production constraints. Based in Seattle, he’s open to 15–20 hour/week remote contracts and brings an unusual blend of formal-methods rigor, low-level performance experience, and a side interest in quantum computing.
11 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science at University of Calgary
English
Stackoverflow
1,487reputation
153kreached
28answers
41questions
sftp
top-5%
Github Skills (31)
parserator10
tlaplus10
tla10
parser10
tree-sitter10
testing10
distributed-systems10
c1110
c1710
neovim10
formal-verification10
rust10
syntax-highlighting10
concurrency10
lua9
Programming languages (29)
Github contributions (5)
tlaplus/Examples
Dec 2022 - Jan 2023
A collection of TLA⁺ specifications of varying complexities
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 39 reviews, 21 commits in 19 days
Contributions summary:Andrew's contributions primarily involve writing TLA+ specifications, indicating a focus on formal verification and modeling of distributed systems and protocols. Their work includes fixing alignment issues, replacing outdated syntax, and adding specifications for various systems, such as an elevator control system, a key-value store, a blockchain, and a probabilistic consensus protocol. The user's commits reflect a deep understanding of TLA+ and its application in specifying and verifying complex concurrent systems.
model-checkingprotocolspecificationtlaspecifications
nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter
Jul 2021 - Jul 2022
Nvim Treesitter configurations and abstraction layer
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 16 commits, 5 PRs in 1 year
Contributions summary:Andrew primarily focused on enhancing the TLA+ language support within the nvim-treesitter project. Their work included adding and updating TLA+ grammar and queries, encompassing highlights, folds, and injections. They also addressed issues related to code style and grammar versions, and updated the parser and maintainer information, contributing to the overall functionality and maintainability of the project.
nvim-treesitterluatreesittertree-sittervim
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