Let's get you caught up. I was born in New York City - The Big Apple. My family moved to North Carolina when I was very young, so that's where I grew up. I got my degree in Software & Information Systems at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

After university, I traveled to South America while building my first startup. Most of my time was spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Eventually I moved to San Francisco, California, and continued my professional career working in the digital advertising industry.

Over the course of my career, I have worked in companies large and small. I have been a professional developer for over 15 years. I have worked on many projects and bring a lot of experience to my work.

Some of my experience involves being in key roles: the first engineer of a startup, a director of engineering, a chief technology officer, a lead engineer, a senior software engineer, and a principal software engineer.

I have been designing and developing web sites since 1997, and got into building web applications soon after. My only professional focus has been web and mobile development. I often code for fun outside of work projects.

Outside of my professional career, I enjoy playing musical instruments, photography, spending time outside, and exploring.

My garden in August 2023.

You may want to know how technical I am. Let's jump right in.

My main programming languages are Ruby, Python, and JavaScript. I have other programming language experience (see my resume), but I definitely prefer languages where I am most productive.

I build web and mobile applications, mostly using Ruby on Rails, Python + Flask, React, Next.js, and React Native. I traditionally use anything from Postgres, Firebase, MySQL and Redis for databases.

I enjoy building systems that are highly usable, performant, clean, well-tested, and well-documented. I advocate for the User, understand tradeoffs between speed and quality, and always try to pay back my technical debt.

Winter backpacking at the highest peak in Virginia.

Here are some interesting samples of work I have done:

While working for a Series A startup based in San Francisco (where I was living at the time) that was pivoting to a mobile-first user experience, I not only wrote the first code that initiated the project, but I also wrote end-to-end automated tests for the v1.0 after we brought in additional developers to complete the feature work. These tests were run continuously in the cloud with Github Actions, and upon successful passing of the test suite, the latest builds were pushed to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store - enabling customers to receive updates as soon as their company's MDM system allowed for the latest update. The company went on to be acquired.

Another story comes to mind: when I was was hired as the first engineer for a different Series A SaaS startup (also San Francisco-based), I received code from a development shop that was tasked with building the company's dashboard. With tight timeframe, I was able to single-handedly take over the project, deploy the software in the cloud, create migration paths for customers from the legacy system onto the new system, and optimize database queries that were causing performance issues soon after launch. From there, I continued building product enhancements, fixed bugs, and hired a team of 4 software engineers to take over the product development. My full-stack software engineering experience as well as leadership skills in early stage startups was largely responsible for this success. The company went on to be acquired.

One more story before we move on: while I was working for yet another San Francisco-based Series A startup, the company entered a merger agreement with another company. During the transition, it was clear that the legacy system was going to be deprecated in favor of a new rewrite. In order to "get ahead" of customer issues, I took it upon myself to build a prototype of what the rewritten software should be. From that point, I obtained approval to continue forward with the prototype, bringing on 2 additional engineers, and together we finished the v1.0 of the new system in just under 3 months. This allowed for continuation of legacy customers' experience onto the forward-looking system with an untold number of user experience issues resolved before the production cutover.