About
A manufacturing engineer's discipline, applied to software.
I'm Kevin Beatty. Five Chip LLC is my independent practice: I find the real problem, then architect and build the solution, working alongside your teams rather than at a distance.
My path
From the cleanroom to the cloud.
In a semiconductor fab, a wrong assumption can scrap a batch of wafers. I've carried that discipline through more than thirty years of engineering.
It's also why I work in person whenever I can, and why I pay attention to every roadblock on a project, not just the technical ones. Budget, politics and timing sink more projects than architecture does, and they're easier to see from inside the room.
1994 – 2012
Semiconductor manufacturing
Process engineering at Plasma-Therm, then process control architecture at Seagate Technology, where a run-to-run control system I designed is still in use in four countries, 20 years later. Co-author of SEMI standard E133.1.
2012 – 2024
Software architecture
Consulting with Object Partners, then six years at Best Buy as lead Kafka architect and engineering associate director for its event-driven order management platform.
2024 – 2026
Principal consultant
At Improving, I modernized a county government system with zero outages and architected an AI platform for court filings where every answer traces back to its source.
2026
Five Chip LLC
Independent, and bringing the same approach directly to your teams.
Education and credentials
Trained as an engineer, first.
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Cincinnati
- Six Sigma trained
- ISO 9001 Lead Auditor (manufacturing)
- Co-author, SEMI standard E133.1
- Systems Thinking and Risk Management, University of St. Thomas
- Temporal Certified Trainer
Get in touch
What's on your mind?
A few sentences is enough to start a useful conversation. Just say what your thinking and we'll take it from there.