Maximilian Bonengl

I’m Max, a systems-minded software engineer in training. I care less about buzzwords and more about how things actually work – under the hood and over time. I try to make sure the “why” is clear before committing to the “what” and the “how”. I started out in digital consulting as a project and key account manager in data and digital marketing. Over time I realised I was more interested in how systems behaved than in selling them, so I moved to 42 Vienna to focus on software engineering. Most of my work now is low-level and backend-heavy: a POSIX-like shell in C, an HTTP/1.1 server in C++, and a real-time web app with Fastify, Socket.IO, Nginx, Vault and Docker. I like breaking down complex problems, understanding the constraints, and building solutions that are simple, observable and robust. When something breaks, I stay calm, reproduce the issue, and work through it step by step. I document decisions, keep communication clear, and optimise for code that other people can understand and extend. Right now I’m focusing on low-level work: writing assembly (libasm), implementing my own malloc (ft_malloc), and rebuilding tools like nm.