About Derek Ciula
I make complicated systems tell the truth about how they work.
I do my best work on small, fast-moving teams where the lead still ships.
Before I change a system, I walk the land: find the real constraint, build the smallest probe that can prove or falsify the story, complete the circuit, and leave evidence for the people who will own it.
The working method
Four moves I keep finding in the work.
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01
Walk the land
Read the system, talk to the people inside it, and observe what it does before deciding what it needs.
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02
Map the real bounds
Observe the system directly, change one condition at a time, and map where reality stops matching the dashboard.
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03
Complete the circuit
Connect the useful prototype to traffic, operations, recovery, and the people who must decide what happens next.
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04
Leave a trail
Write down the evidence, the wrong turns, and the operating decisions so the next person does not start from folklore.
2005–2026
The tools changed. The questions did not.
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2005
The hidden field
I was learning to pull component descriptions out of CAD assemblies through the SolidWorks API. In a public debugging thread, the useful correction came down to the case of a letter. Make the failure visible, accept the correction, keep going.
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2012
A world you could walk through
I built an interactive simulation by hand. It reinforced something that still matters in production software: a model becomes useful when people can move through it, test it, and see where their assumptions stop matching the world.
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2018
The factory floor
I delivered a greenfield order-entry platform for a supply chain spanning more than 100 factories and $300M in yearly order volume. The less visible work was just as important: telemetry, operating help, deployment, and a team able to own the system after handoff.
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2019
Scarcity gets a model
I wrote about job-shop scheduling from inside manufacturing. Seven years later, the same constraints showed up while scheduling AI agents and GPU model loads. Different floor, same discipline: the solver is only as trustworthy as the observations underneath it.
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2020–21
Complete operational circuits
Identity, APIs, security, telemetry, testing, documentation, and cross-training were not separate deliverables. Together they made systems that could be operated, changed, and defended by the people responsible for them.
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2026
The instrumented workbench
Local AI infrastructure, agent control systems, and causal hardware investigations brought the same habit home. The hardware campaign separated three different bottlenecks; the Vulkan investigation retracted a capacity story and moved the actual software wall experimentally.
Where I’m useful now
Difficult systems, small teams, evidence that survives the handoff.
I’m open to selected short, hands-on engagements and the right principal- or staff-level role where the lead still ships. I’m also glad to join serious technical walkthroughs, podcasts, and working conversations.