Martin Lucina
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znegva@yhpvan.arg
github.com/mato
linkedin.com/in/mlucina
Key Skills
Personal
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Native in English, Slovak and Czech. Basic knowledge of German and Croatian.
- Multi-cultural background and life experience (lived for extended periods in Slovakia and New Zealand).
- Experienced in working with distributed teams and Open Source communities.
Technical
- Extensive experience with hypervisor (KVM, Xen, bhyve) and unikernel technologies (Solo5, MirageOS, Rump Kernels and rumprun), hardware virtualization, Linux containers and software security engineering.
- Hands-on experience with the entire Linux/UNIX/POSIX platform and software stack from 1992 through to present day. Highlights include kernel and systems programming, application/library build systems, packaging and distribution (Debian, RPM, OpenWRT, embedded distributions), performance measurement (perf events, low-latency software profiling using hardware TSC), cross-compilation and custom toolchains.
- Designed and implemented many distributed systems using both custom-built messaging and Open Source technologies such as AMQP and ZeroMQ. Co-developer of OpenAMQ (first AMQP implementation), co-author of ZeroMQ low-latency middleware.
- Extensive knowledge of the Internet Protocol stack, POSIX APIs and their various implementations, software portability between POSIX and Win32.
- Programming language agnostic; while I work primarily in C, Assembly (x86, some ARM and MIPS) and shell, I have at various times touched C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Go, OCaml and more.
- Software and release engineering processes and tools – bug tracking (e.g. JIRA, Bugzilla), build automation and CI/CD (e.g. Buildbot, Github actions), version control (e.g. Git) and testing (mostly custom-built solutions).
- Ability to quickly dive into a large code base and solve complex problems.
- Enjoys getting anything to integrate with … anything else.
Open Source Projects
2019 — 2021: NetHSM
NetHSM is an Open Source Hardware Security Module produced by Nitrokey. A MirageOS unikernel implements the HSM APIs and business logic, leveraging OCaml to ensure type-safety and correctness. The hardware runs Muen, an x86/64 Separation Kernel for High Assurance.
Together with the team at Robur and Nitrokey, I was responsible for system design, development and integration of all the lower level components of the software stack (coreboot, Solo5, u-root Linux-based subjects), integration with the Muen Separation Kernel, hardware bring-up and platform support.
2016 — 2021: Solo5
Solo5 is a re-targetable, sandboxed, execution environment, suitable for running applications built using various unikernels (a.k.a. library operating systems), targetting different sandboxing technologies on diverse operating systems and hypervisors.
I was a core developer and maintainer of the Solo5 project from 2016 until 2021.
2015 — 2021: MirageOS
MirageOS is a library operating system that constructs unikernels for secure, high-performance network applications across a variety of cloud computing and mobile platforms. MirageOS is developed in the OCaml programming language, a statically typed and memory-safe language well suited to developing secure and robust software.
My work on MirageOS centred primarily on the low-level base layers, supporting a freestanding OCaml runtime and platform support for MirageOS to run on KVM, FreeBSD/bhyve and other targets (via Solo5).
2014 — 2016: Rump Kernels
Rump Kernels provide free, portable, componentized, kernel quality drivers such as file systems, POSIX system call handlers, PCI device drivers, a SCSI protocol stack, virtio and a TCP/IP stack. The fundamental enabling technology is the anykernel architecture of NetBSD, which enables the use of unmodified NetBSD kernel drivers.
My work with Rump Kernels centred primarily on the rumprun unikernel and its application for running unmodified POSIX applications as unikernels atop various cloud hypervisors.
2010 — 2012: ZeroMQ
As co-maintainer and one of the original developers of ZeroMQ, participated in directing project development and primarily worked on:
- release engineering,
- the GNU autotools build system and test framework,
- operating system portability,
- core feature development and API design,
- documentation (author of the ØMQ API Reference Manual).
Worked with the wider Open Source developer community on establishing common processes for project contributions, project version control with Git and high level abstractions for programming language bindings.
2005 — 2008: OpenAMQ and AMQP
As a member of the core iMatix Corporation team which developed the AMQP standard for message-oriented middleware and OpenAMQ, its first implementation, was responsible primarily for:
As a member of the core iMatix team which developed AMQP and OpenAMQ, was responsible primarily for:
- the core technical and network wire protocol layers of the software,
- portability layers and operating system integration,
- performance analysis and testing.
Selected Consulting Projects
2023 — 2025
Worked with a Slovak client in the education sector to modernise their legacy IT infrastructure and core business software systems. This was a multifaceted role involving systems engineering, database and network administration, endpoint management and “lift and shift” of their legacy core business system into a modern containerized environment.
See my FOSDEM 2024 talk for details on the last point.
2014
For a Slovak client, developed a custom application for mastering read-only flash disks using the UDF filesystem. Using Rump Kernel components enabled the re-use of unmodified production quality NetBSD code and development of the project in record time, including integration with a GUI developed in Qt and C++.
2013 — 2014
As Lead Software Engineer at Boltian, researched, designed and implemented a unique child protection and network security product. Developed a custom portable firmware for embedded wireless routers (Linux/OpenWRT and other OEM) with a back-end HTTP API implemented in C, using the Symas LMDB database for on-board storage. Front-end UI was developed as a modern HTML5 “single page application” using Knockout.js.
2012
Consulting for Hewlett-Packard Korea, advised a major South Korean financial institution on developing a custom low-latency middleware product. Worked directly with the customer’s engineering team to define performance test scenarios and train the team in understanding performance measurement of low-latency systems.
2005 — 2008
On the business side of the OpenAMQ project at iMatix Corporation, took on the role of Product Manager. Responsible for the migration of an existing application at JPMorganChase bank from legacy middleware onto OpenAMQ. Worked closely with the client to successfully migrate their global deployment onto the new middleware.
2004
Developed a custom middleware product for iMatix Corporation. The product connected GSM network operators with SMS applications, providing full message queueing and routing for SMS messages with support for multiple protocols (UCP, XMPP and custom SOAP), routing of multiple short codes, and billing. Implementation was in a mix of C and Perl, using Libero state machines to define program logic.
2002
Worked with iMatix Corporation on an industrial automation project for CBR Belgium. Developed a custom embedded Linux distribution based on the Debian “boot floppies”, integrated the full software and hardware stack. Designed and implemented a redundant fault-tolerant architecture allowing for hot-swap of components; the embedded kiosks would boot from the network and the boot server was simply a Live CD.
Further Work Experience
2000 — 2001
Worked for Catalyst IT, a leading Open Source company in New Zealand, as lead developer on the PropertyStuff project, a nationwide real estate classifieds website which we built with HTML::Mason and Perl.
1998 — 2000
Worked for EDS (New Zealand). Developed a custom backup application for the NCR MP-RAS platform, written in C and Perl. Involved in developing, deploying, maintaining and mentoring users of an internal multi-platform software toolset, based on GNU and other free software and using RPM as a package manager.
Publications and Talks
Lift and shift: Modernising a legacy LAMP application with systemd-nspawn, FOSDEM, February 2024. (slides and recording)
Solo5: A sandboxed, re-targetable execution environment for unikernels, FOSDEM, February 2019. (slides and recording)
Unikernels as Processes, with Dan Williams et al. SoCC ‘18 Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, October 2018. (paper)
Deploying real-world software today as unikernels on Xen with rumprun. Xen Project Developer Summit, August 2015. (slides, recording)
Rumprun for Rump Kernels: Instant unikernels for POSIX applications. New Directions in Operating Systems, November 2014. (slides)
ZeroMQ “chalk talk” for general developer audience. Presented at Weta Digital, March 2012. (slides)
Towards messaging on an Internet scale, with Martin Sústrik. Self-published, March 2010. (paper)
ØMQ: A new approach to messaging, with Martin Sústrik. LWN.net, January 2010. (article)
Education
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand — attended courses in computer science and philosophy.
Interests
Photography, the arts, typography, hiking and sailing.
RYA Yachtmaster Offshore holder since 2022 with 10,000+ nautical miles of experience (as of 2026).