Summary

I build products that work for real humans. Over 20 years, I’ve shipped donation platforms processing millions in charitable giving, scaled fintech products handling Bitcoin transactions, and led teams through the entire product lifecycle: from zero to production to profitability. My highest-leverage work is deep technical leadership, setting architecture and still shipping the code. Being promoted to VP of Engineering confirmed it: I’m deliberately on the individual-contributor track. I’m equally comfortable writing code, designing products, and talking strategy with executives. Best suited for Principal/Staff-level engineering roles where you need someone who codes well and thinks like a product owner.

Core Competencies

Leadership & Product Strategy: Team building, Shape Up, Agile, Scrum methodologies, product roadmap development
AI & Automation: LLM integration, autonomous agent orchestration (marketing, bug triage, customer support, feature development), LLM-powered code analysis and generation, AI-assisted development workflows
Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Sidekiq
Concurrency: Multi-threaded background job processing (Sidekiq), async I/O in Node.js, thread safety with Mutex in Ruby
Data Engineering & Infrastructure: dbt pipelines and data transformation, BigQuery, Docker containerization, GitHub workflow automation, AWS
Frontend: React, TailwindCSS, StimulusJS, modern JavaScript
Domain Expertise: SaaS, nonprofit tech, fintech, Bitcoin/blockchain, double-entry accounting
Full-Stack Capability: REST APIs, MVC architecture, TDD, DevOps, payment integrations

Professional Experience

Principal Architect Engineer → Vice President of Engineering at Gierd, Inc.

December 2024 - August 2026

Gierd is an e-commerce technology startup serving marketplace sellers that process an estimated $1 billion in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), providing unified marketplace orchestration, syndication, and competitive pricing intelligence that helps brands scale direct-to-consumer and refurbishment operations across Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Back Market, and other marketplaces. Guided architecture decisions across product and led engineering teams to ship new features while maintaining app stability and data integrity at scale. Promoted to VP of Engineering in July 2026 to lead the engineering organization through a company-wide restructuring.

Key Achievements:

Led the mission-critical Rails platform that customers and the customer success team use to manage product pricing and reporting; one of four designated code owners, its top contributor, and the primary reviewer on critical changes
Led the design of a resilient, scalable data extraction system that our team built to ingest data from marketplace APIs at scale, feed the data warehouse, and power pricing analytics and automated repricing workflows
Caught and defused a cross-system coupling risk in which a small change to a single locale rule would have silently rerouted an entire class of customers to a different international API, governed by an extraction routine living in a separate system; refactored the extractor provisioning so the locale configuration could ship without disturbing extraction API routing, avoiding downtime and a data backfill
Helped our team build AI code review automation that cut code review time by more than 50%, unblocking engineers and helping them ship faster
Architected data pipelines using dbt and BigQuery to transform complex repricing and syndication workflows into reliable, maintainable data systems
Led a team evaluating Redpanda (Kafka-compatible event streaming) for the marketplace data extraction pipelines; the team delivered a proof of concept for streaming ingestion at scale
Delivered under ambiguous requirements and complex architectural constraints, using AI to develop new features and perform deep, cross-cutting systematic debugging across multiple interdependent systems
Developed an internal skills library and “company brain” that pulled together resources and knowledge from across the technology stack to provide deep research and quick answers to complex questions
Worked closely with the VP of Engineering, CTO, and COO to align engineering outcomes with business objectives
Set architecture and delivery direction for the repricing and syndication systems closest to revenue, and owned reliability and data integrity for the Rails platform that customers and the customer success team relied on daily
Drove adoption of AI-assisted engineering across the team, from code review automation to agent-supported feature work and cross-system debugging
Led engineering across multiple teams (front-end and UI, the Rails platform, data extraction, and site reliability), aligning technical scope, project priorities, and data integrity across dependent systems

What matters: Repricing and syndication directly impact revenue. My job was to make those systems fast, reliable, and understandable to both engineers and stakeholders, leveraging AI, data infrastructure, and architectural clarity to get there.

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, dbt, BigQuery, Redpanda (Kafka-compatible), Docker, GitHub Actions, Claude, OpenAI, autonomous agent orchestration

Founder at MemberDrive LLC

September 2022 - Present (part-time)

MemberDrive is an online fundraising and donor management platform for nonprofit organizations. Designed for nonprofits to convert one-time donors into recurring members with full integration to Stripe and accounting systems, MemberDrive provides big-donor functionality at a price tag small charities can afford.

Key Achievements:

Designed and built the entire product, using the framework of my own needs as a fundraiser and experience working with small nonprofits
Engineered agentic workflows to ship features and fix bugs faster by executing multiple feature developments in parallel
Shipped a Bitcoin giving integration alongside the Stripe Connect donation flow

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect, Bitcoin, DevOps, Claude, LLM-powered autonomous agents

Senior Software Engineer at SRS Acquiom

January 2023 - Nov 2024

SRS Acquiom provides a Virtual Data Room (VDR) platform serving the M&A industry. My responsibilities included developing new features, peer-reviewing code submitted by other engineers, and enforcing project standards and best practices.

Key Contributions:

Implemented features and fixed critical bugs in a large legacy Rails codebase serving the M&A industry
Refactored subsystems to improve maintainability and reduce technical debt
Built a proof of concept for fine-grained authorization (OpenFGA) and began its integration into the platform
Contributed to code reviews and sprint planning under a demanding engineering-quality bar

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, OpenFGA

Senior Full Stack Engineer at Swan Bitcoin

January 2022 - December 2022

Swan Bitcoin is a Bitcoin exchange serving individual and institutional investors. At Swan I worked directly with the product team to release features that users were waiting for.

Key Achievements:

Shipped an account-based permission system enabling multi-account access, opening up an entirely new customer segment
Participated in a major domain model overhaul that enabled users to seamlessly switch between multiple accounts
Contributed across the full stack: React frontend components and Node.js backend features

Technologies: React.js, Node.js

Lead Developer at Dime Technology

May 2019 - January 2022

Dime Giving is the flagship product for Dime Technology, serving churches and nonprofits with financial accounting and online donations. I wrote the first line of code, built the product through launch and scale, and eventually led the small engineering team.

Key Achievements:

Built the initial product that became the foundation of Dime Giving.
Implemented Shape Up management methodology, cutting the traditional software development cycle significantly and allowing us to ship new features faster
Built multiple payment integrations to allow Dime Giving to natively process donor giving while powering Dime’s revenue generation
Worked as part of the team on KYC and secure card vaulting for donation processing
Worked directly with CEO on product strategy. My input shaped which features were prioritized and how the product evolved

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, JavaScript (StimulusJS), CSS (TailwindCSS), Payment integration, KYC, card vaulting, QuickBooks integration

Founder and Lead Developer at Booster Stage, Inc.

November 2004 - April 2019

Booster Stage was a web development agency serving startup clients who needed custom software. Scaled from a solo operation to a team of employees and contractors.

Key Achievements:

Shipped several MVP applications for startup clients
Built and managed the engineering team, hiring contractors and employees, establishing processes
Generated consistent client pipeline through marketing and sales work
Applied Shape Up methodology across internal and client projects, proving it works in real business settings

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, StimulusJS, TailwindCSS

Founder at Donor Tools

August 2007 - December 2014

Donor Tools is an online donation and CRM platform for nonprofit organizations. At the time it was one of the first modern web-based platforms for nonprofit fundraising.

Key Achievements:

Created one of the first online donor management and online giving programs: Built the product from the ground up that demonstrated nonprofits would pay for modern online donation and donor management tools
Grew the customer base to over 600 customers who previously had no affordable alternatives to expensive legacy systems
Implemented advanced features including dynamic Smart Tags, PayPal donations, and QuickBooks integration, capabilities that were novel for the category at the time
Successfully exited through acquisition: Transitioned the product and customer base to partners, validating both the product-market fit and the business viability

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, PayPal API, QuickBooks integration

Web Development Team Lead at Biola University

January 2004 - December 2004

The Web Development Team at Biola University was charged with maintaining the University’s website and content, as well as department-specific sub-sites. I led the web team managing website infrastructure and custom applications for university departments. Worked directly with Marketing Communications.

Key Responsibilities:

Maintained internal web applications
Developed content management systems tailored to individual college needs
Coordinated website updates across multiple departments

Projects

Diurnum: Open-source plain-text accounting app (Rust, Tauri), architected and shipped entirely through autonomous AI agents. Features AI-assisted transaction categorization with confidence-gated human review and output validation, so AI drafts every entry but nothing reaches the ledger without human approval.

Education

Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership, Biola University, 2007
Bachelor of General Studies, Computer Information Management, Jacksonville University, 2003
Associate of Arts, St. Johns River Community College, 2000

Board Service & Volunteer Experience

Board Member & Treasurer (officer), Chesterton Academy of Tyler, 2025 - present
Volunteer, Haiti180 orphanage and medical clinic, 2019 & 2021
Vice President, Elgin Citizens’ Police Academy Alumni Association, 2017 - 2019
Website Designer, Annunciation Maternity Home, 2016

Key Accomplishments

Over 20 years of continuous full-stack development across startups, agencies, and established companies
Shipped products serving hundreds of organizations (Dime Giving, Donor Tools) that process millions in annual transactions
Built teams and established engineering culture at multiple organizations: hiring, processes, and standards that outlasted my tenure
Proven ability to bridge business and engineering: equally comfortable shipping code or discussing product strategy with executives
Mastered Shape Up methodology and successfully applied it to reduce development cycle time and improve time-to-market