HELLO

I’m Torfinn

Who I AM

I’m a web3 forward TPM who lives at the intersection of protocol reality and developer experience where shipping can’t afford to be anything other than robust, governable, and easy to use. I’ve led Layer 1 core protocol architecture and deployment efforts, cross org K8s migrations, GDPR compliance data deletions orchestration programs, driven 0→1 platform launches, and run privacy/security/compliance programs that have to survive real audits without slowing teams down.

These days I’m most excited by the web3 adjacent wave of AI + automation, and I’ve got a deep macro view regarding the tokenization of assets and payment infrastructure along with visions of interesting liquidity and collateral flows I’d love to chat about. I’ve thoroughly experimented using agentic workflows to tighten release machinery, generate evidence linked documentation, and build guardrails that make distributed systems faster to operate and harder to break. You can see some of my public footprint in talks about IPFS and Filecoin content routing in Brussels on youtube, or github PRs on public projects in Hedera/Hiero, Filecoin, IPFS, or other private repos I’m happy to talk about.

Behind the scenes, I’ve built a reputation for running complex programs across time zones coordinating teams and partners spanning the US, China, Latin America, and European working hours turning ambiguity into an execution system people actually stick with: clear goals, crisp interfaces, dependable cadence, and operating models that keep working after I’m gone. I often get positive feedback years later on models still operating from engineering partners still uncovering some of the magic I’ve left behind they’ve grown to rely on.

I speak English, choppy German, comically chaotic Spanish, am a self employed chef, an oldschool cypherpunk, and a proud dad based in Los Angeles California.

RESUME
Github

MY WORK

I’m a hands on program leader who clears blockers, aligns stakeholders, and keeps teams moving. I guide international teams from early ideation through market launch for cloud based web and mobile products. I build test solutions and use the products the teams I’m working with as they’re building to act as their ultimate chaos test and get solutions preemptively on their side of the table. I believe in empathy and kindness as core principles for cohesive team building, and always come to the table with demonstrations of my willingness to completely work through problems before asking my engineering partners to come to the table.

  • At Hedera, my work sits at the seam between fully simulating networks representing the entire Hedera protocol and developer experience.

    The job is to make a powerful distributed system feel easily deployable with local tools. We achieve that with how we plan, how we ship, and how builders using our tools experience the platform.

    Highlights:
    - Product lead for solo providing integration demos, sample code for new users to trial the virtual networks, and user documentation to early testers and docs teams to guide their work. Provided quarterly cross functional planning and dependency resource support.

    - Front seat partner and facilitator to Engineering org process streamlining efforts and process mapping/test and release automation efforts.

    - Proposed and built demos for x402 protocol Agentic workflows which resulted in a series of payment processing exercises.

    View Hedera

  • At Protocol Labs, I worked on IPFS/IPNI/Filecoin content routing. The product is a set of protocols and the user is the entire IPFS/Filecoin ecosystem. I loved this territory as it’s technical, cross team by default, and it rewards clear mental models with visual representations. IPNI is able to work at the scale of billions of CIDs with fast HTTP REST lookups, and my job was to keep execution moving while we aligned on the “what” and the “why.”

    Highlights:

    - Formed and steered the IPFS Content routing work group inviting the interests of several different protocols cross lookup needs often among divisive difficult decisions(all on youtube open to the public). Isolated decisions, and pushed them to production.

    - Created shared alignment artifacts—like my recorded session at IPFS þing 2023 introducing the content routing workgroup.

    - Pushed privacy from “nice idea” to “explicit scope,” aligning teams around reader privacy goals documented publicly.

    View Protocol labs

  • At Coinbase I focused on platform leverage: ship something for the first time, make it safer, make it reusable, and make it scale. This included both “build” work (0→1 platform capabilities) and “make it robust” work (migration and governance programs).

    Highlights:

    - DRI’d a 0→1 cloud developer platform for blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service—reducing friction for teams and customers who want node access without running nodes.

    - Ran an org wide data deletion / right to be forgotten program where the outpu was an operating model including governance, runbooks, evidence trails, and escalation paths. This program involved 43 engineering teams incorporating our deletion orchestrator into their codebases and demonstrating it’s compliance.

    - Led a Kubernetes migration of 45 customer-facing services, standardizing how teams deploy and operate production workloads. From local deployments.

    View Coinbase

  • During my time with Zillow I was a technical lead on the core tech platforms supporting IT systems deployments and refactoring across the entire company.

    Highlights:

    - Built capacity planning standards for engineering teams to support a number of restructuring events and help eng teams get much needed support relative to their backlogs to mate up with product timelines.

    - Designed new hire lifecycle automations and AI implementation to eliminate manual efforts associated with hiring.

    - Core tech security liason for helping security team deploy more broadly with recognition to how boots on the ground were receiving security artifacts.

    View Zillow

  • Global Program management with physics. Shipping real devices with embedded software that can only be updated over the air globally creates a degree of timeline interdependence not normally experienced in typical software. I kept score with detailed goals based on battery life, telemetry consistency, manufacturing time to market, field failure rates to name a few. I led multi product IoT deliveries and maintained product ownership for firmward, hardware, cloud platform and global compliance in 147 countries. I was the sole program manager driving cohesive execution among roughly 100 globally distributed engineers.

    Highlights:
    - Delivered global programs across $4-7M+ budget and multi-region teams (Brazil/China/HK/India/US)

    - Designed/Shipped 5,600+ devices across 6 continents generating 3M+ realtime datapoints and the platform to operate/observe them.

    - Supported execution across 14 concurrent software projects by improving QA signal quality and operational dashboards.

  • Early in my career I indexed heavily on IT infrastructure and operations at large scales as a network infrastructure engineer. I led identity, security and domain migration efforts across tens of thousands of assets and dozens of west coast locations.