Mike Stephen
Staff Software Engineer at Canto
Ireland
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMike Stephen is a Staff Software Engineer based in Ireland with a strong track record in cloud-native networking and security, currently driving engineering at Canto after leadership and senior roles at Tigera where he worked on Project Calico. With roughly five years in recent cloud-native roles built on a long career in Java and C/C++ systems, he specializes in backend and DevOps work around routing, WireGuard integration, and reliable network policy enforcement. His open-source contributions to Calico/Felix include improving WireGuard routing, RPF handling, MTU calculations, iptables adjustments and test reliability—practical fixes that improve real-world cluster networking at scale. He combines hands-on protocol-level engineering with team leadership experience, able to move between low-level packet and routing logic and higher-level product concerns. Colleagues value him for pragmatic problem solving that tightens the gap between tests and production behavior, and for shipping durable fixes in widely deployed infrastructure.
5 years of coding experience
26 years of employment as a software developer
UNSW Sydney
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (18)
kubernetes10
cni10
networking10
iptables10
wireguard10
security10
go10
kubernetes-pods10
testing9
felix9
dockers9
docker9
calico9
golang9
container8
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
projectcalico/felix
Apr 2021 - Nov 2021
Project Calico's per-host agent Felix, responsible for programming routes and security policy.
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:47 reviews, 10 commits, 13 PRs in 6 months
Contributions summary:Mike contributed significantly to the project's WireGuard integration, focusing on enhancing routing and network configuration. They implemented features to improve WireGuard routing, address RPF check issues, and ensure proper MTU calculations. These changes involved modifying iptables rules, adjusting routing logic, and updating the test suite. The user also worked on improving the reliability of the WireGuard FV tests.
containersgolangpolicyhost-agentagent
projectcalico/calico
Jun 2021 - May 2022
Cloud native networking and network security
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:15 reviews, 20 commits, 18 PRs in 10 months
Contributions summary:Mike primarily contributed to the enhancement and maintenance of the Calico project's core functionality. Their work included adding features for Wireguard host-to-host encryption, refactoring the event sequencer, and fixing casting errors related to route table configurations. The user also worked on implementing pod annotation features. This suggests a focus on the underlying networking and configuration aspects of Calico.
multi-clustersecuritynetworkingsdnvirtual-network
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