About
I'm Xiujun Ma — a software engineer who runs production systems on FreeBSD and writes about the infrastructure behind modern web apps, AI agent workflows, and the unglamorous glue that keeps things running.
This site covers three areas I work in daily: FreeBSD and BSD operations (ZFS, jails, pf, pkgbase, upgrades), AI-powered development workflows (Claude Agent SDK, MCP, n8n, self-hosted models), and modern web runtimes(Next.js in production, hardening, deployment). Everything I publish is tested on real hardware and real deployments, not summarized from docs — if a command appears in a post, I've run it.
By day I'm a software engineer at Synoptix Software in Utah, building full-stack web applications for enterprise clients with React, TypeScript, and Next.js. Over the past two decades I've worked across the stack — JavaScript and Node, Java, and Kotlin — shipping everything from early-stage products to enterprise systems. Somewhere along the way FreeBSD became the platform I reach for when I want to run things myself, and most of what I write here comes out of operating my own infrastructure on it.
I hold a Bachelor of Engineering from Northeastern University and have since added certifications in machine learning, generative AI for software development, and modern React. I care about performance, reliability, and code that holds up under pressure — and about writing it all down so the next person (often future me) doesn't have to relearn it from scratch.
- Self-hosting production workloads on FreeBSD
- Building and operating AI agent runtimes on indie infra
- Next.js + React deployment patterns and security
- Practical Unix systems writing with working commands
For consulting inquiries or collaborations: see my resume and reach out via any of the profiles above.