Rocket Lab Cover Letter

Matt Mischewski | Whangaparāoa, NZ | matt@dreamineering.com | +64 29043 28139

Dear Rocket Lab Recruiting,

Standards transform industries. HTTP gave us the web. ISO 9001 gave Japan its manufacturing miracle. The pattern: interoperable standards compound faster than capital.

I build internal tools that become operational standards — systems that make decisions traceable, operations visible, and coordination automatic. For a space company coordinating rockets, satellites, and ground stations, these aren't just helpful. They're the foundation everything else depends on.

The Convergence I See​

Space, telecom, and robotics are converging on the same problem: how do distributed physical assets coordinate without centralized bottlenecks?

The Intercognitive Foundation is building standards for this — nine pillars for physical AI coordination. Rocket Lab's internal systems map directly:

This is where value migrates as industries mature. Margins compress in the middle; value accrues at the edges. Satellites are the edge — capturing data and energy that fuel the next generation of autonomous systems.

What I've Built​

Gensolve (Healthcare SaaS) — Inherited 50+ clinics waiting for data migration. Built an ETL pipeline with validation and staging so non-developers could run migrations safely. Cleared the backlog, reduced onboarding from weeks to days. Then built an analytics layer: balanced scorecards that self-evaluated across marketing, clinical demand, operations, and finance. Algorithmic measurement, not dashboards for humans to interpret.

Telecom (WorldCom/Verizon) — Built an arbitrage algorithm that exploited patterns in routing data during deregulation. Required cleaning and standardizing data across four siloed systems. Learned why departments don't talk to each other — technical and political — and why unified internal tools matter. Telecom is being rebuilt from the edges — the same pattern applies to space.

Manufacturing R&D — First job was getting engineering drawings into an ISO 9001 MRP II system. Drawing lifecycle management, JIT supplier coordination, design-for-assembly validation. This is where I learned Deming: 94% of problems are systems problems, not people problems.

Engineering Consulting — Built dairy factories from concept to commissioning. Civil layouts, P&IDs, all-trades coordination. Project management is a state machine problem. The Business Factory pattern comes from here.

Current Work​

Dreamineering (Now) — Building a mental model site that documents how industries transform and how standards compound. Not just documentation — a working TypeScript/Nx codebase implementing the patterns:

• Hexagonal architecture — Domain boundaries, port-first development
• Nx monorepo — Multi-app coordination with clear ownership
• AI-assisted development — Claude Code for architecture, Cursor for iteration
• PostgreSQL + Drizzle ORM — Type-safe data layer
• Docker, GitHub Actions — Deployment ownership

I'm shipping code daily with AI as a pair programmer. Not just prompting — directing architecture, reviewing generated code, debugging edge cases. The productivity multiplier is real, but only if you understand what you're building.

Technology Fit​

I treat software as disposable but data-flow architecture as durable: how information moves through missions, factories, and clinics is the part that must be designed once and designed well. This is the standards thesis applied to internal tools.

Why Rocket Lab​

Internal systems for a space company are where operational reality meets engineering intent — the third space where plans, people, and data coordinate. This is pre-Intercognitive infrastructure: coordinating physical assets (rockets, satellites, ground stations) with the same patterns that will later coordinate billions of robots and autonomous systems.

The same validation loops I describe on the mycelium page are implemented in a working codebase. Dreamineering exists as both documentation and running software — proof that I build what I write about.

I'm local to Auckland, comfortable with high-tempo environments, and drawn to roles where internal systems are mission-critical.

Happy to walk through the codebase or discuss how standards transform operations.

Matt Mischewski