Andrew Helwer

TLA⁺ core developer

Seattle, Washington, United States

About

Software engineer with a decade of professional experience. Particularly effective when working with distributed systems and formal methods - especially TLA+ or Z3. Have intensive side-interests in quantum computing and formalization of mathematics. Enjoys climbing, submission grappling, and mushroom foraging outside of work.

Experience

  • Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft
    Apr 2026 - Present · 3 mos

    Azure Storage

  • Software Engineer at Disjunctive
    Jul 2020 - Apr 2026 · 5 yrs 10 mos

    Independent software engineering consulting with a focus on applying & improving formal methods - formal specification & verification, static analysis, SMT solvers, and theorem proving. A particular focus on TLA+ and Z3, applied to analysis of distributed systems and access control systems.

  • Microsoft (Redmond, Washington)
    • Software Engineer II
      Apr 2019 - Jul 2020 · 1 yr 4 mos

      Software engineer on the Microsoft Quantum Systems team. Developed tools & services in support of researchers in the lab as they attempted to reliably manufacture nanowires. Engaged with public to teach quantum computing concepts.

    • Software Engineer II
      Apr 2017 - Apr 2019 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      Software engineer on the Microsoft Azure Wide Area Network (WAN) team. Designed & implemented distributed checkpoint coordination protocol with formal specification in TLA+. Decreased memory footprint of Azure DNS database backend. Worked with team to develop configuration & management service for Azure network devices.

    • Software Engineer
      Mar 2014 - Apr 2017 · 3 yrs 2 mos

      Software engineer on the Microsoft Azure Compute Manager team. Developed scalable services in C++ and C#. Modernized team engineering infrastructure. Significantly decreased time required for creation of new Azure clusters, datacenters, and regions. Identified $8 million in annual data storage cost savings; personally implemented over $1 million of those savings.

  • Software Engineer Intern at Microsoft
    May 2013 - Jul 2013 · 3 mos

    Microsoft Software Engineer Intern on the Microsoft Azure Datacenter Manager team, summer 2013. Wrote a log viewing service in C# using the ASP.NET Web API.

  • Software Developer - Internship Student at Acceleware
    May 2011 - Aug 2012 · 1 yr 4 mos

    Developed high-performance scientific computing software targeting GPUs. Projects included simulation of electromagnetic waves with the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, CT scan reconstruction, and antenna design for radio-frequency heating. Used C++, CUDA, MPI, and OpenMP.