1993 STILL SHIPPING

More than thirty years of writing code. I never stopped.

I'm Edwin Gonzales — an engineering lead. What I've shipped runs from university-wide systems and hospital records through ERP for manufacturing and retail to a national-scale platform administering social programmes in five countries. I build in Python, FastAPI, Odoo and PostgreSQL, and I still write and review code every day. I work AI-first with Claude Code and Cursor, taking a feature from a vague requirement to something running in front of real users.

Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines · remote worldwide edwin@pithtech.net github.com/pithtech linkedin.com/in/edwin-nariz-gonzales

01 — What I do

Four shapes the same experience takes

More than thirty years across engineering, delivery and teaching means I fit more than one brief. These are the roles where I'd be strongest, and what I'd bring to each.

Engineering lead

I lead 5 developers and 2 QA engineers, own the branching strategy and release governance, review every significant pull request — and I'm still the lead developer on the codebase, not a manager who left it behind. Fifteen years as a university IT director and faculty member before that, so mentoring isn't an afterthought.

Full-stack & AI engineer

Python and FastAPI services, PostgreSQL schema and migration design, React and Flutter frontends, and LLM features built on the Claude API that return structured data, not free text — output the rest of the system can act on. Test-first, deployed on AWS.

Odoo implementation & support

I've worked in Odoo continuously since it was called OpenERP, through to Odoo 19. Requirements discovery, configuration and custom modules, statutory compliance work, data migration, user support and documentation. Techno-functional: comfortable running the discovery workshop and writing the module that comes out of it.

Product owner / delivery

A decade turning policy and business requirements from non-technical stakeholders into scoped, sequenced work developers can build against. Roadmap ownership, release scope and sign-off, dependency and risk tracking, and delivery documentation.

02 — Introduction

In my own words

Who I am, what I've built, and how I work — two and a half minutes.

03 — Selected work

A public API for a national benefits platform

One slice of a platform I work across end to end: the API layer that lets mobile apps, partner systems and government agencies read and write beneficiary data safely — inside a system that decides who receives social assistance.

OpenSPP — API v2, consent & audit

I'm both Head of Engineering and lead developer on OpenSPP — every module, from registry and programme management through entitlements, payment cycles and integrations. The subsystems below are the part that's easiest to explain to someone who doesn't know the codebase.

The problem

Country teams needed to connect field apps and partner systems to the registry. The existing interface was all-or-nothing — anything that could read a record could read every record, and there was no way to prove after the fact who changed what.

What I built

A FastAPI service layer with OAuth2 and PKCE for native clients, scoped permissions per consumer, standards-based data-exchange endpoints, a structured change-request workflow so corrections are reviewed rather than applied silently, and record-level audit logging.

The hard part

Authorisation couldn't live in the endpoint alone. A missed check would leak citizen data, so access rules are enforced at the record layer too — the API can't accidentally hand back something the caller shouldn't see.

The result

Third parties integrate without direct database access. Every change to a beneficiary record is attributable. Shipped test-first, with the suite committed alongside the feature and gated in CI.

Read the source About OpenSPP
Python FastAPI PostgreSQL OAuth2 / PKCE Odoo Docker CI/CD
Philippines

DSWD 4Ps — the national conditional cash transfer programme

Sri Lanka

National farmer registry

Laos

National farmer registry

Togo

National social registry

Iraq

Public Distribution System

04 — How I work

Ownership, tests, and AI that gets checked

What you get if you hire me, described honestly.

End to end

I take a loosely defined problem through discovery, plan, build, test and release. I don't need a finished ticket to start.

Test-first

Unit and integration suites written alongside the feature, not after it, and gated in CI before anything reaches production.

Stakeholder-facing

I translate policy and business requirements into specifications developers can build against — and say no when the ask is wrong.

Still hands-on

I lead engineering and I write production code. Estimates and architecture calls hold up because I'm in the codebase.

Release discipline

Branching strategy, pull request standards, release scope and sign-off, versioning and upgrade paths across multiple deployment environments.

I write things down

Configuration and workflow documentation, user guides, training material and video walkthroughs — so teams can operate what I build without me.

Data you can trust

Record-level audit logging, data imports and exports, migration validation, and reconciliation across systems — because an ERP is only as good as the data in it.

Support, not handover

I stay with what I ship: first-line and escalation support, troubleshooting workflow issues, diagnosing performance problems, and guiding users through changes.

AI tools I use daily

Claude Code is my primary development environment — planning, implementation, refactoring and documentation. Cursor for in-editor work. I've also built Claude API features into products, where the model returns structured configuration that downstream code consumes rather than free text.

The part that matters isn't the tooling — it's the discipline around it. I rolled AI-assisted development out to a working team, which meant deciding what has to change: scoped prompts, project rules, disciplined diff review, and validation before merge. AI raises the bar on specification quality — vague requirements produce confidently wrong code, quickly. Output gets checked, not trusted. With that discipline in place, my team cut feature delivery time by 70% and took review turnaround from three days to one.

05 — Experience

What I've shipped

Since 1993, most recent first.

2025 — present

Head of Engineering & Lead Developer

OpenSPP

  • I lead a team of 5 developers and 2 QA engineers and work hands-on across all 100+ modules of the platform, deployed in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Laos, Togo and Iraq.
  • Own the technical roadmap, release scope, and governance; review every significant pull request.
  • Designed and shipped the v2 API stack, change-request workflow, consent and audit subsystems.
  • Introduced AI-assisted development across the team, with the review standards to keep it safe.
2025 — present

Resource Person & Technical Consultant

Asian Development Bank

  • Advise government stakeholders on enterprise architecture and open-source adoption for digital transformation programmes.
  • Audit technical solutions for scalability and security, presenting findings to non-technical decision makers; deliver capacity-building workshops to implementing agencies.
2020 — present

Founder & Principal Engineer

pithtech

  • Client engineering consultancy: architecture, full-stack build, AWS deployment and ongoing support.
  • Delivered a full Odoo 19 production system on AWS for a US garment manufacturing and retail client — EC2, Aurora PostgreSQL, CloudFront, WAF, CI/CD — and still maintain it.
  • Built multi-channel sales consolidation with Shopify integration and REST ingestion from external retail systems.
2022 — 2025

OpenSPP Lead Developer

Newlogic, Inc.

  • Lead developer on the same platform before it moved under OpenSPP — building modules across the codebase, not a single area.
  • Owned release management, CI/CD and code quality for national-scale deployments, working with a distributed team of 8 developers across 3 time zones; reviewed pull requests daily while remaining the top individual contributor to core modules.
  • Guided project managers, product owners and architects from incomplete requirements to buildable work.
2016 — 2019

Head of Operations / Co-Owner

Pith Technologies

  • Ran delivery across concurrent ERP projects; managed the technical support team.
  • Customised Odoo accounting to meet Philippine BIR accreditation requirements.
2013 — 2014

Chief Technology Officer

Electronics Health Records International

  • Led development of a Hospital Information System and EMR, supervising multiple development teams and setting product strategy.
  • Designed interoperability with national health systems and insurer integrations.
  • Advised the board and management committees on technical direction and trade-offs.
2010 — 2022

Independent Consultant & Software Developer

Freelance

  • Full-stack systems for education, healthcare and commerce clients — usually as the only engineer accountable for the result.
  • Designed and built a custom CRM for a real estate client: lead pipeline, contact and property relationships, activity tracking.
1995 — 2010

Director, Computing & Information Systems / Faculty

Saint Mary's University

  • Directed university-wide IT infrastructure, data communications, systems development and security — including digital transformation initiatives — for fifteen years.
  • Taught and mentored undergraduate and graduate students; presented research internationally.
  • Delivered business intelligence training (Pentaho) covering ETL, data modelling and reporting.
1993 — 1995

Instructor

Central Luzon State University — Computer Training Center

  • Taught programming and built the training centre's information system.

06 — Also built

Other things I've shipped

Shorter versions, in case one of them is closer to what you need.

Made-to-measure configurator

Real-time suit configurator for a retail client — Flutter client, FastAPI and Odoo backend, S3 and CloudFront asset delivery, layered 2D compositing, and a Claude API concierge that returns structured design configuration the render pipeline consumes. Led the architecture, including the system-of-record decision between the storefront and the ERP. Flutter · FastAPI · Claude API · AWS

Multi-channel sales dashboard

Consolidated daily sales for a multi-store retail group: REST ingestion from external shop systems plus a Shopify integration handling OAuth, permanent tokens and rate-limit-aware sync. Replaced channel-by-channel manual reporting. Python · Shopify API · PostgreSQL

Odoo 19 on AWS

Production deployment for a US garment manufacturing and retail client — it runs their production workflows across multiple product lines. EC2, Aurora PostgreSQL, CloudFront, WAF, CloudWatch, SES and IAM, multi-repo deployment automation, CI/CD. Requirements through go-live, and still supporting it. AWS · Odoo · CI/CD

Odoo accounting for BIR

Customised Odoo accounting to meet Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue accreditation requirements — statutory reporting rules worked through with the client's finance team and documented for audit. Odoo · Statutory compliance

Custom CRM

Designed and built a CRM for a real estate client: lead and pipeline workflow, contact and property relationships, and activity tracking — specified directly with the business owner rather than handed over as a spec. CRM · Requirements & build

Hospital information system

Led development of an HIS and EMR with interoperability into national health systems and insurer integrations — high-consequence data flows where the failure cases drove the architecture. Healthcare · Interoperability

MOODLE@SMU

University-wide rollout of an open-source learning management system, published as research and presented at conferences in Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Macau. Open source · Published research

07 — Detail

Stack & background

The full list, for anyone matching against a specification.

Backend

Python, FastAPI, REST API design, OAuth2 and PKCE, microservices, FHIR/HL7, Node.js, Odoo and ORM design, PHP, C++. C#/.NET in production earlier in my career — currently refreshing on modern .NET.

Frontend

React, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, OWL, Flutter and Dart.

Odoo

Custom fields and models, workflows and automated actions, email templates, QWeb PDF reports and forms, saved searches and filters, access rights and record rules, scheduled and server actions, data migration, OCA modules, Flectra.

Data

PostgreSQL — schema design, migrations, query profiling. Aurora, Oracle, MySQL/MariaDB, SQLite. Metabase, Superset, Pentaho, ETL workflows.

Cloud & infrastructure

AWS (EC2, Aurora, S3, CloudFront, WAF, CloudWatch, SES, IAM), Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Docker, Kubernetes, Nginx, Linux administration, load balancing, GitHub Actions and CI/CD.

Networks & hardware

Asterisk, FreePBX, UniFi Talk with SIP, VPN configuration, network routing and security, structured cabling, Raspberry Pi, Arduino.

AI engineering

Claude Code, Cursor, Claude API integration, structured-output prompting and validation, AI-assisted refactoring and review, guardrails and review standards for AI-generated code.

Delivery & product

Requirements gathering and stakeholder discovery, business process analysis, user stories and acceptance criteria, vertical slicing, sprint cadence, roadmap ownership, release management, dependency and risk tracking. Jira, GitHub Projects, Slack, Google Workspace.

Quality

Test-driven development, unit and integration testing, CI-gated test runs, code review standards, static analysis, staging and UAT validation.

Education

MSc Information TechnologyPolytechnic University of the Philippines, 2009

BSc Computer ScienceAMA University, Quezon City, 1993

Published & presented

Research on open-source LMS adoption, presented in Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Macau. Research on open-source ERP, presented at an international conference in the Philippines.

Affiliation

National Board of Trustees, Philippine Society of IT Educators, 2006–2009.

Languages

English — full professional proficiency, written and spoken. Filipino — native.

08 — Get in touch

edwin@pithtech.net

Open to remote engineering roles worldwide. I read everything and reply to anything specific.

Send me an email See my GitHub Find me on LinkedIn