Melbourne Baldove

Rigorous systems.
Beautiful stories.

I sit at the intersection of hard engineering and product intuition. Great products feel inevitable, but they are built on deliberate, rigorous choices. I ensure that every line of low-level code directly supports a high-level human need.

01 / The Journey

Haeru

Co-founder & CTO
2025 — Present

I am currently building Haeru, a life-story companion app designed to help users see their growth and feel their life as a narrative.

As the architect, I designed a distributed system using Gleam for the platform service and Python for the 'Brain' service, all orchestrated via Nix for strictly reproducible infrastructure.

I engineered a Zep-like memory layer and an autonomous reflection pipeline, utilizing RabbitMQ to orchestrate a scalable fleet of background workers that generate daily reflections and weekly postcards.

Red Airship

Fullstack Consultant
2021 — 2023

Consulted for OCBC Bank, engineering new features for their high-traffic consumer and business mobile banking applications.

Contributed to the fullstack development of a critical healthcare portal using Next.js, building both frontend and backend components to enhance functionality.

Hey You

Senior Software Engineer
2018 — Present

Drove a strategic Android platform rewrite (Kotlin/Jetpack Compose) after successfully proposing the initiative with data-backed analysis. This overhaul raised the Play Store rating from 2.7 to 4.7 and reduced crash rates by over 90%.

Simultaneously led the complete rewrite of the merchant-facing application from React Native to native Android, significantly improving maintainability and merchant satisfaction.

Architected and maintained backend features for legacy PHP systems and modern AWS Lambda microservices, while also supporting the iOS consumer app.

OWTO

Senior Systems Analyst
2018

Designed a highly efficient surge pricing algorithm and conceptualized the end-to-core software architecture for both the backend and mobile ecosystems.

Developed both the Owto (Passenger) and Owto Driver applications, implementing realtime features like driver tracking, trip live streaming, and dynamic fare calculation.

02 / Selected Works

Haeru

Current Focus

An autonomous AI companion for life-stories with genuinely engaging conversation. I designed the agent to generate smart daily reflections and weekly narrative postcards so users feel their life as a story.

Stack: Gleam, Python, SwiftUI, RabbitMQ, Nix

Raytracer

Graphics Engine

A 3D renderer built in Zig to simulate light physics. Implements vector math from scratch to produce realistic shadows, reflections, and refractions.

OCBC Digital

Mobile

The official mobile banking platform for one of Asia's largest banks. Engineered high-performance features for millions of daily users.

Hey You Consumer

Mobile

A food order-ahead app. Led the native Android rewrite using Jetpack Compose, improving performance and user retention.

Transformers

R&D

Built a Transformer in pure NumPy to demystify the 'black box' powering modern AI.

Jack Compiler

Compiler

A two-tier compiler for the Jack language implemented in Rust, exploring computing from assembler to VM.

© 2025 Melbourne Baldove