Keith Mukai
Tech Lead & Co-Founder at IHSA OFFICIAL
Greater Chicago Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolKeith Mukai is a seasoned tech lead and serial founder with 13+ years building full-stack, cloud-native products and embedded blockchain systems. He combines hands-on engineering (Python/Django, Postgres, Docker, AWS Lambda) with smart contract and C++ EOSIO/WAX experience, shipping products from provably-fair WAX contests to multisig Bitcoin tooling and Lightning experiments. A frequent open-source contributor, his work on Specter Desktop and SeedSigner reflects deep, practical expertise in Bitcoin privacy, PSBTs, HWI/Tor integration, and multisig workflows. He prefers leading small, mission-focused teams—establishing core architecture himself, then training juniors to scale the product forward. Uncommonly for a technologist, his background as a high-school English teacher informs unusually clear communication and requirements refinement across technical and business stakeholders. Based in Chicago (also LA/remote), he’s seeking short- to medium-term roles where entrepreneurial grit meets cryptographic systems.
13 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
M.Ed. Instructional Leadership Secondary English, M.Ed. Instructional Leadership Secondary English at University of Illinois ChicagoNiles West High SchoolUniversity of California, Los AngelesAB Computer Science, AB Computer Science at Princeton University
English
Github Skills (15)
bitcoin10
sbt10
bitcoins10
python10
flask10
flask-ask10
tor10
cryptography10
bitcoin-core10
open-source9
hardware-wallet9
html9
os-development9
javascript8
css7
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
SeedSigner/seedsigner
Jun 2021 - Jan 2023
Use an air-gapped Raspberry Pi Zero to sign for Bitcoin transactions! (and do other cool stuff)
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:88 reviews, 344 commits, 108 PRs in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Keith primarily focused on modifying and adding functions to implement the cryptographic aspects of the SeedSigner, a Bitcoin signing device. Their contributions include porting existing code, bug fixes, and enhancements, and included code that handled functions around the creation and signing of transactions. The user made multiple changes to import statements and library usages. The user also made changes related to the handling of PSBTs.
raspberry-pipi-zerozerosignair-gapped
cryptoadvance/specter-desktop
Oct 2019 - Nov 2022
A desktop GUI for Bitcoin Core optimised to work with hardware wallets
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:39 reviews, 70 commits, 56 PRs in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Keith made various contributions to the Specter Desktop GUI for Bitcoin Core. They worked on backend aspects, such as correctly parsing the `rpcconnect` configuration option within `bitcoin.conf` and integrating Tor. They also made front-end improvements, including improvements to the onboarding flow by hiding the wallet UI until a device is registered. Furthermore, they refactored the wallet sending functionality and added support for Taproot PSBT fields.
desktop-guiwalletsspecter-desktopwalletgui
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