builder of teams and systems that stay calm

I build calm systems in chaotic environments.

I’m Jedrzej Nowak (call me NJ). I’ve spent 20+ years in places where things break loudly: telco, blockchain, and now AI. I’m a systems architect by trade, and I stay close enough to help without becoming a bottleneck.

mail_me() book_intro() cv.pdf
  • Remote-first since 2015
  • Built trusted teams across 10+ time zones
  • Currently helping build an AI startup from the ground floor

how I work with people

What working together feels like

I stay in the weeds when it helps

I don’t do command-and-control. I join architecture and incident work when useful, then get out of the way so teams can decide and move.

I trust teams to decide

Product, infra, and people are one system. Clear ownership and fast feedback keep teams moving without creating fragility.

Practical beats fashionable

I care about clean systems, but I care more about what ships and keeps working. Pick the tool that fits; skip the dogma.

things I’m proud of

A few concrete wins

$50k / month

Cut cloud spend

Moved critical workloads to better-fit bare metal and reduced monthly cloud costs by ~$50k.

2+ years

Kept mainnet steady

Helped launch a novel proof-of-spacetime network and kept it healthy for over two years.

100+

Built teams people trust

Hired, mentored, and backed engineers to lead work across multiple countries and time zones.

20+ years

Stayed useful for 20+ years

Shipped in telco, infra, crypto, and AI — usually where downtime is expensive.

what teams can expect from me

My default operating style

  1. Design for recovery, not perfection

    Things will fail. The goal is fast recovery and clear ownership when they do.

  2. Decision rights are explicit

    The team closest to the work decides. I provide context, pressure-test options, and clear blockers.

  3. Measure the real stuff

    SLOs, cycle time, and incident quality matter more than slide-friendly metrics.

where I’ve been lately

Recent stops

Founding Engineer · Stealth AI Startup

2025 → now

Building product from scratch and helping shape the engineering team.

Head of Engineering · Spacemesh

2022 → 2025

Helped bring mainnet to life and kept a distributed team effective across 10+ time zones.

Head of Engineering · Travelping GmbH

2019 → 2021

Ran mission-critical telco infrastructure where reliability affected real drivers and fleets.

Senior Engineer to Engineering Manager · Mirantis

2015 → 2019

Built large-scale OpenStack/Kubernetes automation and grew remote teams.

Co-Founder & CTO · Codernity

2011 → 2015

Co-founded a company and built distributed products before they were trendy.

Early Career · Various

2004 → 2011

Python engineer, consultant, and open-source contributor. This is where I built my foundation in distributed systems and infrastructure.

open to interesting problems

Building something hard and messy?

If your team is scaling fast, dealing with AI complexity, or untangling brittle systems, let’s talk.

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