ryneandal

SEEKING WORK — Senior Software Engineer — Remote from Valencia, Spain

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours. Work authorization in US and EU.

CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

15+ years in backend systems, architecture, legacy modernization, and infrastructure. Recent AI work includes production RAG/codebase retrieval, MCP services with approval controls, enterprise document retrieval, and building custom AI benchmark/eval.

Python (Django, FastAPI, Flask), PHP (Laravel, Drupal), PostgreSQL, APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Linux, RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, MCP, vector databases, and AI agents/ agent evaluation.

SEEKING WORK | Valencia, Spain | Remote only

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring. Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

SEEKING WORK | Valencia, Spain | Remote only

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring. Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

SEEKING WORK | Valencia, Spain | Remote only

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

SEEKING WORK | Valencia, Spain | Remote only

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

> Haven't seen that in many other cities.

Really? In my limited experience in Europe I've often seen attendance to museums are free. When we were in Ireland and Scotland, most museum/galleries were free with suggested donations. In contrast, museums in Italy had fees for attendance.

I know here in Spain, most attractions run by Museos Estatales are free on Saturday PM and Sundays, but some are also free every day (e.g. Museum of Fine Arts here in València).

Granted, that's a very limited subset of European countries/cities, I'd be interested in the pricing structure of other European countries/cities because we are definitely planning to travel in Europe more often now that we live here.

As a sidebar, I can't recommend The Chester Beatty museum enough - https://www.chesterbeatty.ie

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs).

Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Location: Valencia, Spain (CET) Remote: Yes (US & EU; daily 4-hour overlap with US business hours) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Python (Django, Pydantic/FastAPI, LangChain, LangGraph), PHP (Laravel, Drupal), Docker Résumé/CV: https://linkedin.com/in/ryneandal (full CV available on request) Email: ryne.andal@gmail.com

Currently have part-time/fractional availability for independent consulting/contract work. Recent work has involved AI integrations (LangChain, LangGraph, FastMCP), data pipelines, CI/CD workflow automations, etc. 15+ years of experience in software development.

I haven't done exhaustive testing of all top-performing models on the HF Embedding Leaderboard (https://huggingface.co/spaces/mteb/leaderboard) but I have tested a number of them extensively in the past month or two. The two best API provider models I've tested are:

- JinaAI (https://jina.ai/embeddings/) v3 and v4 performed well in my testing. - Google's Gemini-001 model (https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models#gemini-embeddin...).

Overall, both were surpassed by Qwen3-8b (https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B).

Note, this was specifically regarding English and Code embedding generation/retrieval, with reranking.

IMO the PyTorch getting started tutorials are really good (https://pytorch.org/tutorials/beginner/basics/intro.html).

A classifier for handwritten digits in the MNIST dataset is generally considered the "Hello World" of neural networks. I went over it in a course, but there are countless tutorials to be found online, i.e. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/introductio...

Once you begin to understand how to handle data and how to define layers, you can start playing around with whatever your heart desires. The rabbit hole is vast and endless :)

Mine was $750 :(

Herculaneum was one of the highlights of my trip to Italy with the wife. I didn't realize the scope of just how much ash and soil had to be removed for excavation. It was dozens of meters [1]. It's an absolute shame that the site is given a fraction of the attention that Pompeii receives, I thought it was vastly better preserved and truly awe-inspiring [2].

I highly recommend spending a few hours wandering the site, it is an absolute wonder.

1: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#08dJAA5eM9jpbhlEa3fzkl5ng 2: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#076Pof4FziA7WgcI8hZrGZmzg

I use iTerm in visor mode, so ctrl-~ (tilde) shows my terminal tabs and changes focus to them. Pushing it again hides them and returns focus to the previous app.

I'll gladly take cookie banners to have the ability to expect a company to nuke any data they've collected about me.

I agree with your generalization now that I give it some thought. Even for topics I have little interest in or know little of, creative solutions are enthralling.

Your latter assessment is why even arbitrary limitations commonly inspire interesting gameplay and art style IMO. I quickly grew tired of Assassin's Creed and similar open world games; in contrast, games like The Messenger can pull me in immediately.

The (admittedly few) game jams I've actually completed had limiting restrictions (i.e. 8/16-bit art/gameplay). Two things make me more productive/creative than normal: looming deadlines and limitations.

Game developers getting creative due to hardware limitations is a topic I will never grow sick of. Historical gamedev journalism has grown much in recent years, with outlets like NoClip (https://www.noclip.video/) producing phenomenal content.

Also Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebb/) are fascinating reads. Both Doom and Wolfenstein 3D sit on my living room coffee table.

Dan Olson is FAR more eloquent than I will ever be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA&t=9s

I have issues with memory/retainment due to a traumatic brain injury from a car accident in high school, and am incredibly dependent on using Obsidian as sort of a "second brain."

While I've only adopted about half of the methods outlined in Tiago Forte's book, Building a Second Brain [1], it's been very effective for me. I prefer hierarchical folder structure for organization, but I do use his overall PARA structure.

I also use an "inbox" or intake folder inspired by Zettelkasten for newly created notes. I really believe significant cognitive overhead of sorting/tagging/organizing gets in the way of getting your thoughts/notes written down. I generally spend ~10-15 minutes after getting the kids to bed to organize any notes created throughout the day. This is part of my wind-down routine, involving quickly journaling an overall summary of the day on my daily notes and migrating any outstanding TODO's to the next day.

IMO though, the most important thing is to use whatever method of structure/routine/organization works for you. Approach it as an iterative process and play with interesting ideas or methodologies.

One thing in Tiago Forte's BASB that I _strongly_ agree with is that regardless of how much organization you put into your digital notes, search is often the fastest way to find something you're looking for, so spending immense time on organization is counter-intuitive to the reason to take notes. Spending some time to organize your thoughts can inspire connections between notes that you hadn't initially thought of, but it is a slippery slope: it is easy to get lost in the process of structuring your notes and end up with that as your sole purpose of your documented thoughts.

1: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/book

It's really surprising how awful the official Python docs are, considering how much the language has grown of late. If I need to reference core Python docs these days, I almost always go to this version on devdocs.io[1].

Thankfully most of the reference documentation I have to look up are the popular data science libraries like pandas. Their documentation[2] is so much cleaner than core Python.

1: https://devdocs.io/python~3.11/ 2: https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/index.html#api

Apologies, I missed this when initially posted and regret it. An illuminating and touching read which puts the book into context. Reading about her affliction brought me to tears at this point:

> At times, she said, bright sunshine has felt “like an oppression, a weight leaning on me”; she often retreats to a darkened room. In the late two-thousands, when her illness was at its worst, she was unable to get out of bed, experiencing depression, social anxiety, and agoraphobia.

Thanks for sharing the article, it resonates with me immensely. I went through similar hypersensitivity issues due to a car accident and brain injury, and still deal with some of that fallout. Knowing this background about Clarke makes the protagonist's perspective at the end even more meaningful to me.

Yeah, that is my expectation about its future as well. I really enjoyed using Fig for clear CLI introspection for many of my common workflows.

I am fully expecting that I'll have to go back to zsh-autosuggestions once the current iteration is fully wound down.

Cannot recommend Piranesi by Susanna Clarke enough. A lovely read and could be devoured in an entire day if you're willing and able.

Highly recommend his History of Mathematics lectures on YouTube, if you are interested in that sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW8Cy6WrO94&list=PL55C7C8378...

The entire premise of the Scientific Method is dissent and skepticism. Fallacious claims that "big science" is effectively an arm of the government because of research grants and other funding is not dissent, it is a feeble red herring.

Besides, modern engines get pretty incredible gas efficiency on the highway. A lot of the minivans these days run a 10-speed automatic with a well-tuned V6, netting nearly 300bhp and pushing 30 mpg on the Interstate.

The occasional family road trip shouldn't be a cause for disdain, families with children shouldn't be shunned for wanting to travel and enjoy the various things their region has to offer.

> People spec their cars for the biggest usage case they can imagine, not their average trip. > For that one time in the year when you have to haul some lumber.

WFH is my secret. The only time my truck comes out of the garage is when something needs hauled. The utility benefits my whole immediate family as well, whenever they need something transported.

I find it to be the best of both worlds.

It appears you're grossly misinterpreting his statement. When you have children, you treasure alone time _that much more_. That's his meaning.

It isn't some desperate plea like you're implying.