Local AI coding setup
A fully local coding assistant on an M2 Mac. Qwen3-Coder is served through MLX-LM and bridged with LiteLLM so it works with Claude Code.
Sveinn Ólafur Arnórsson
Software engineer in Reykjavík, currently at Arion banki. For over thirty years I've built systems that have to keep working: air traffic simulators, coast guard vessel surveillance, payment gateways, and now the services behind a bank's trading and pension products.
1992Today
- Aviation air traffic and radar
- Maritime vessel surveillance
- Payments cards and gateways
- Mobile iOS and Android
- Banking trading and pensions
About
I trained as an engineer before I wrote software for a living: mechanical engineering at the University of Iceland, then an MSc in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford, focused on guidance and control. That background in feedback systems, Kalman filtering and real-time behaviour still shapes how I approach software. I want to know how a system behaves when inputs are noisy, late or wrong.
Since then I've worked in Reykjavík, Copenhagen and Miami, on everything from radar simulation to card-less e-commerce built with the Icelandic banks' data centre. I've also studied financial engineering, which comes in handy now that I build trading and portfolio services.
Away from the keyboard I run and play football.
Now
Arion banki app services
I build the core services behind the Arion banking app: securities trading, portfolio management and pension self-service, in C# on modern .NET with SQL Server, Redis and RabbitMQ.
Exchange integration testing
A testing strategy for trading connectivity to Nasdaq Iceland. It uses lightweight ASP.NET Core stubs, xUnit and Testcontainers, so the integration can be verified long before it touches a live feed.
Pension systems architecture
API-first, service-based design for pension administration in Iceland. Separate services handle members, employers, contributions, funds and payments, with integrations to the tax authority, the financial supervisor and Registers Iceland.
Delivery and platform
Keeping Azure DevOps and Octopus Deploy pipelines healthy and Artifactory feeds tidy. I also work on charting a path from .NET Framework to modern .NET.
AI-assisted engineering
Running coding models locally on Apple Silicon and working with tools like Claude Code day to day. It continues an interest in machine learning that goes back to Stanford's first online ML course in 2011.
Experience
2018–today
Senior Software Engineer
Arion banki, Reykjavík
Services for the Arion banking app, including core services for securities trading, portfolio management and pension self-service.
2015–2017
Senior Software Engineer
Handpoint, Reykjavík
Design and development of a payment platform for mobile card terminals and integration of payment protocols in the gateway. I was lead developer on the gateway team.
2013–2015
Software Engineer
Cowbell, Reykjavík
iOS and Android apps backed by Amazon Web Services and Parse, mostly sports apps with social betting and challenges.
2010–2012
Software Engineer
Trackwell, Reykjavík
Electronic reporting systems and vessel monitoring for fisheries. Catch reports were processed automatically and forwarded to international monitoring agencies.
2007–2010
Software Engineer
Cowbell, Miami
Payment and billing services. Card-less e-commerce through central registration of credit and debit cards, built with the Icelandic Banks' Data Centre.
1998–2007
Software Engineer and Project Manager
Trackwell, Reykjavík
Automatic security surveillance of all Icelandic vessels above a set size, and coast guard monitoring of foreign fishing vessels inside the Icelandic Fisheries Zone. This included tracking vessels in international waters with automatic catch reporting.
1996–1998
Software Engineer
Integra Consult, Copenhagen
Remote health monitoring for air traffic control equipment. I interfaced legacy hardware and put a heartbeat on every critical point.
1992–1996
Software Engineer
Systems Engineering Lab, Reykjavík
Air traffic and radar simulator for route optimisation and testing of ATC equipment. It produced realistic radar readings with noise and errors for each radar type, and ran real-time display, control and data streaming.
Education
MSc Aeronautics and Astronautics
Stanford University, 1994
Guidance and control, feedback control, digital control systems.
BSc Mechanical Engineering
University of Iceland, 1992
Control systems, Kalman filtering.
Graduate courses in Financial Engineering
Florida International University, 2007
Securities analysis, fixed income, portfolio management, financial futures.
Machine learning and AI courses
- Structuring Machine Learning Projects, deeplearning.ai, 2018
- Improving Deep Neural Networks, deeplearning.ai, 2017
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning, deeplearning.ai, 2017
- Machine Learning, Stanford, 2011
- AI for Robotics, Stanford, 2011
Skills
Current stack
- C# and .NET
- SQL Server
- Redis
- RabbitMQ
- Docker
Delivery
- Git
- Azure DevOps
- Octopus Deploy
- JFrog Artifactory
Also worked in
- C++ and Objective-C
- Java and UNIX shell
- Oracle databases
- MATLAB
Integration
- REST and WCF
- Apache CXF and Axis
- Apache HTTP and Tomcat
- xUnit and Testcontainers
On the side
Want to talk about software, systems or finance?
I work in Icelandic and English.