About
Fragments of a biography, assembled from forty years of building software and adjacent curiosities.
Fredrick “Fred” Lackey
I have spent four decades building software — beginning with early systems engineering at Arcada during the Backup Exec era, through the full-stack trenches at Spotless, into cybersecurity infrastructure at CISA / Department of Homeland Security, where I continue to work today. Within that engagement, I have also led enterprise architecture and modernization projects at Travelers Insurance.
The common thread is not any one technology. It is the practice of understanding systems deeply enough to change them responsibly. Whether modernizing legacy platforms, designing distributed architectures, or integrating AI into developer workflows, the work is always about bridging what exists with what is needed next.
I lead engineering teams with the same orientation: clarity of purpose, architectural thinking, and a bias toward building over theorizing. The best architectures come from people who still write code. The best code comes from people who understand the architecture.
“Understanding systems deeply enough to change them responsibly — that is the work, regardless of the stack.”
CISA / Department of Homeland Security
Cybersecurity infrastructure and systems for the federal government's lead cyber defense agency. Ongoing engagement includes project work at Travelers Insurance on enterprise architecture and modernization of critical insurance systems.
Spotless
Twelve years of full-stack development, technical leadership, and platform engineering.
Arcada / Backup Exec
Early career in systems engineering. Foundations in infrastructure, storage, and enterprise software.
AI Integration
Building AI-augmented development workflows, knowledge systems, and tooling
Engineering Leadership
Scaling teams, technical strategy, and organizational design for engineering orgs
Software Architecture
Distributed systems, microservices, event-driven patterns, API design
Full-Stack Development
Node.js, .NET, React, Spring Boot — database to interface
Legacy Modernization
Migrating critical systems forward while preserving institutional knowledge
Developer Tooling
CLI tools, CI/CD, automation, and infrastructure for builder productivity
Building two AI-focused tools: Knowledge Builder, a system for synthesizing domain expertise into queryable knowledge graphs, and Career Coach, an AI-powered career navigation tool built from decades of industry experience.
Technologies, patterns, and practices that recur across four decades of work: