Michael Birch
Senior Software Engineer at Near One
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Birch is a Senior Software Engineer with a decade of experience building high-performance blockchain systems and developer tooling, specializing in Rust and functional Scala. He has contributed to major open-source protocol implementations—such as a pure-Rust EVM and NEAR/ Aurora clients—focusing on gas optimization, concurrency, and maintainable, performance-conscious code. With a background in physics and scientific computing, he applies rigorous mathematical thinking to protocol design and smart-contract execution semantics. Michael is also experienced in CI/CD and DevOps for blockchain clients, and has a track record of improving code quality through linting, refactors, and test-driven enhancements. Based in Hamilton, Ontario, he enjoys doing math for fun, which informs both his pragmatic engineering and exploration of subtle protocol-level optimizations.
11 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS Physics, Master of Science - MS Physics at McMaster University
Github Skills (20)
code-optimization10
transaction10
transactional10
evm10
clippy10
virtual-machine10
gas-optimization10
blockchain10
smart-contracts10
rust10
rholang10
testing9
nearprotocol9
data-structure9
algorithm9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
near/nearcore
May 2020 - Sep 2022
Reference client for NEAR Protocol
Role in this project:
Backend Developer & DevOps Engineer
Backend Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:192 reviews, 99 commits, 75 PRs in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on improving the codebase's quality and maintainability through the application of linters and refactoring. They addressed clippy errors, corrected inefficient code patterns and implemented performance improvements within the codebase, mainly affecting the chain and chunk processing components. The user also contributed to the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline by modifying related configuration scripts, and by integrating a testing framework.
nearprotocolblockchainrustwebassembly
rust-ethereum/evm
Jun 2021 - Dec 2022
Pure Rust implementation of Ethereum Virtual Machine
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 reviews, 30 commits, 2 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on implementing and refining features related to EIP-2929, which involves optimizing gas costs in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Their contributions included modifying gas cost calculations, adding functionality to access and track storage, and handling transaction costs related to the access list. The commits demonstrate a deep understanding of the EVM's internal workings, particularly in the context of gas optimization and state access. The user also addressed bugs and made code refactorings related to their work, demonstrating proficiency in the project's codebase.
ethereumrustvirtual-machine
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