Read The System
Understand the business context, technical dependencies, unknowns, and failure modes before locking in a solution.
Founder
Arnar Ingi Gunnarsson
Founder of Gale Force North. Technical lead, software engineer, university teacher, researcher, and field operator.
Gale Force North is Arnar Ingi's company for technical lead work across product architecture, infrastructure, delivery, handoff, and operations. The focus is straightforward: make decisions clear, make responsibility explicit, and move software from plan to deployment without losing the thread. Selected examples from client delivery, research, teaching, and field operations.
Arnar Ingi
Arnar Ingi works across software delivery, infrastructure, teaching, research, and field operations.
His client work turns early product and platform decisions into concrete delivery structure: architecture, AWS environment planning, implementation direction, design handoff, and coordination with specialist contributors.
At Reykjavík University, he led the Frostbyte / NCC-IS cybersecurity lab launch and has taught programming across first-year courses, data structures, practical Python project work, Django/web support, and advanced web programming.
His graduate research has focused on applied systems work: memory-forensics pipelines and subsea-cable seismic analysis using HPC workflows, Slurm processing, and GPU training. The subsea-cable work includes Nokia Bell Labs collaboration and was presented at EGU 2025.
Scope
Software architectureCloud deliveryResearch and teachingStartup strategyField leadership
What Arnar Ingi Does
Gale Force North gives clients a technical lead for structure, delivery, and handoff.
Arnar Ingi defines product and system architecture, sets up development paths, documents technical decisions, reviews constraints, and connects design, frontend, backend, infrastructure, partners, and operations. The work is practical: define what is being built, who owns each part, how it will be deployed, and what the next person needs in order to continue.
Gale Force North works on technical foundations before larger builds, senior engineering inside delivery, and handoffs between product, design, software, and infrastructure.
How Arnar Works
The working method is direct: read the system, assign ownership, coordinate the work, leave it operable.
This comes from repeated work where unclear responsibility would slow the project down or create operational risk. It applies in software architecture, AWS delivery, cybersecurity lab operations, research pipelines, university teaching, and field operations. In infrastructure work, unclear ownership becomes fragile deployment and systems only one person understands. In field operations, it becomes missed equipment, bad timing, and weak safety margins.
Make Ownership Explicit
Define who decides, who has access, who operates the system, and where responsibility changes hands.
Coordinate The Whole
Keep software, infrastructure, partners, design, and operational requirements connected to one delivery outcome.
Leave It Operable
Create a readable path for deployment, administration, maintenance, and handover instead of relying on private knowledge.
Field Background
The field work is part of how Arnar Ingi learned to plan around real constraints.
Arnar Ingi's field background includes Icelandic search and rescue, glacier and mountain guiding, Svalbard expedition planning, and the Greenland ice-sheet recovery connected to Air France Flight 66. That work involved route planning, equipment discipline, group movement, crevasse and rope systems, polar-bear precautions, weather decisions, and practical risk management.
Under Ice, created by Arnar Ingi over four months, documents the final Greenland recovery of the Air France A380 fan-hub fragment. The Field Systems & Operations page carries the field context and media record. The Selected Work case studies carry the project record.
Icelandic Search And Rescue
Search And Rescue
Active Icelandic search-and-rescue work with repeated field training in mountain and glacier environments. The work includes glacier travel, rope systems, crevasse-rescue practice, group movement, equipment discipline, changing weather, and decisions made under practical field constraints.
Mountain travelGlacier travelRope systemsCrevasse rescueField decisions
Svalbard Expedition Leadership
Svalbard SAR Expedition
Planned and led a 60 km Svalbard SAR training expedition, coordinating route planning, local boat support, accommodation, flights, satellite communications, polar-bear safety measures, night watch, rifle and flare-gun readiness, and weather-dependent field decisions.
60 km routeBoat logisticsSatellite commsPolar-bear safetyNight watch
Commercial Field Guiding
Glacier And Mountain Guiding
Worked for several years as a glacier and mountain guide with Arctic Adventures and Icelandic Mountain Guides, leading hikes, super jeep tours, glacier walks, and introductory ice-climbing trips. That work reinforced a practical operating style built around preparation, pacing, equipment discipline, clear communication, and weather-aware judgment.
Glacier walksIce climbingSuper jeep toursGroup safetyWeather judgment