Michael Arnold

Who I am Professionally

I'm a software engineer with expertise in distributed systems and platform engineering. I currently work at Amazon Ads in San Diego, where I build event-driven systems that model and enforce advertising policy, in real time, across large-scale global ad serving infrastructure.

Previously I worked at AWS on the Aurora MySQL team, where I developed the software platform and deployment infrastructure used to validate database releases across AWS regions worldwide.

My work generally sits at the intersection of scalable backend architecture, event-driven systems, and developer infrastructure. I enjoy building reliable systems that automate complex operational workflows and enable large engineering organizations to move faster and deliver more.

I like taking ambiguous and abstract business problems and owning the technical solution end to end, from whiteboard to production. I am known for deep dives that reach the root of a problem, for design docs and demos that make complex systems easy to reason about, and for giving and seeking honest feedback early. I care as much about how a system is understood and maintained as how it performs.

I work as an AI-native engineer. I leverage agentic workflows to parallelize my workstreams and automate the busywork. That frees me to push forward on several fronts at once and spend my own attention on the judgment calls that matter. It lets me move faster and deliver more on behalf of my customers.

Who I am Otherwise

I'm a surfer, an outdoorsman, a BJJ player, and a friend. When my life isn't focused on one of those, I am still building and tinkering on projects; this site is one of those projects, where I keep my writing and photography.

Contact

Email: me@michaelarnold.io