Matthew Purdon

I'm a principal engineer and AI platform builder based in Toronto, twenty-five years into building software. These days I spend as much time building the processes that decide how software gets built as the software itself: how teams review work they didn't type, how the development lifecycle reshapes itself around models, and how you interview for any of it.

The processes are where an AI transition succeeds or quietly falls apart, so that is the part I gravitate to: setting the platform boundaries, standing up the review and governance that let a team ship with models in the loop, hiring and leveling for the new shape of the work, and keeping standards from eroding while everything speeds up. I have led that on real initiatives, not only written about it.

Note: I’m the Toronto-based principal engineer / AI platform builder Matthew Purdon, not the San Francisco product/creative Matthew Purdon.

This site is two things. Field Notes is where I write — partly thinking out loud about where the craft is heading, partly literal notes from watching real teams change how they work. The Lab is where I keep the things I've made: software, yes, but also the processes and playbooks I'm proudest of. Some of it was built with an AI pair; where that's true, I say so.

I write in the open because the half-formed version, dated and a little wrong, is more useful than the polished version that never ships. If something here is wrong, that's an invitation — tell me.