~/nevie/developer

The developer

Self-taught software engineer. Police officer. Second-in-charge, Research and Planning — Eastern Region Police Headquarters.

The two things that look contradictory turn out to be complementary: both are about systems that have to work when it matters. Software that fails silently is as dangerous as an officer who doesn't show up.

Software Engineer Police Officer · 2IC R&P BSc Forestry & Env. Management

~/developer/profile

university Mzuzu University
degree BSc Forestry & Environmental Management
rank Police Officer · 2IC
unit Research & Planning, Eastern Region HQ
focus Software Engineering

~/nevie/developer/skills

Skills

Backend

Java 21 Spring Boot Spring WebFlux Spring Security Spring Data REST APIs Gradle

Android

Android SDK Java (Android) Room SQLite Retrofit Material Design 3 ViewBinding

Frontend

HTML CSS JavaScript Bootstrap 5 HTMX Thymeleaf

Infrastructure

Linux VPS Nginx systemd MariaDB PostgreSQL MySQL H2 GIS

~/nevie/developer/work

What I build

Spring Boot backends

Microservices with well-defined boundaries, REST APIs documented with OpenAPI, Spring Security for access control, Spring Data for clean persistence layers. MVC for server-rendered portals, WebFlux where reactivity genuinely helps.

Android applications

Native Android in Java — architecture, offline-first data with Room and SQLite, Retrofit for API integration, and Material Design 3 UI built to survive real device constraints and limited connectivity.

Government & institutional systems

Operational platforms for police, government, and institutions built for real infrastructure constraints: on-premise servers, low bandwidth, small IT teams, and strict data sovereignty requirements.

VPS deployment and operations

Linux VPS from scratch — Nginx as reverse proxy with SSL and gzip, Spring Boot jars as systemd services, MariaDB tuned for the workload, UFW hardening, and monitoring without managed-service overhead.

~/nevie/developer/approach

How I work

Self-taught means I learned what I needed when I needed it — starting with the problem, not the syllabus. That shaped how I approach engineering: understand the constraint first, then pick the tool.

Having a background in forestry and a career in law enforcement is not as strange a combination with software as it sounds. Both fields reward systematic thinking, careful observation, and building things that hold up under real-world conditions — not just controlled environments.

The systems under nevie.xyz are the result: independently deployable, long-lived, and built to be maintained by the person who designed them.

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