I’m Robin Howlett — a software engineer and engineering manager, currently a Software Development Manager at Amazon Ads DSP. I was made in Ireland and I’m now based in Boulder, Colorado, with my wife Sarah and our twins.

This blog is where I write up the things I build and the problems I enjoy picking apart. Over the years that’s spanned a lot of code — Java, Spring, JVM tooling, CLIs, browser extensions, PDF parsing, and the occasional deep dive into things like how SSL/TLS actually works — and a good amount of horse racing, where I like turning messy real-world data into something you can reason about.

Lately I’ve been building a couple of side projects I’m excited to write about here — including redboarder, an app with AI chat built in.

Thanks for reading!