About
I started by teaching
my teachers how to fix computers.
That impulse—curiosity in service of others—has been the constant across 15 years of engineering work. I'm a technical leader who designs, builds, and scales technology solutions across industries: aerospace, gaming, media, food tech, and civic tech.
I thrive on transforming complex challenges into practical, user-centered solutions—whether that's simulating real-world physics with Monte Carlo ray tracing, recovering millions in cloud spend, or architecting the platform that helped 30,000 Angelenos navigate wildfire recovery. My experience spans systems engineering, product strategy, agile development, and team building.
At Better Angels, I built the engineering organization and core platform from scratch for a civic tech nonprofit making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring in Los Angeles. I shipped the HIPAA-certified Outreach App used by case managers in the field, delivered the LA Disaster Relief Navigator during the 2025 wildfires, and grew an open-source volunteer program.
Alongside that, I built SolidAngle Data: an independent civic intelligence platform that makes LA City Council activity—thousands of PDFs, transcripts, voting records, and campaign finance filings—searchable and understandable by anyone. The campaign finance engine uses probabilistic entity resolution to trace multi-hop PAC funding chains across local, state, and federal records.
"I believe technology should serve people, drive meaningful change, and be accessible to all."
I'm a player-coach. I write code and I lead teams in the same week. I set roadmaps and I review PRs. I thrive at the intersection of deep technical work and human systems—because you can't separate the two. My goal is to build systems—and teams—that outlast my involvement.
Career
Architected an independent civic intelligence platform that aggregates unstructured Los Angeles municipal data—thousands of PDFs, transcripts, and databases—to bring transparency to LA City Council activity. Engineered NLP-driven legislative tracking with full-text search, automated meeting summarization, and cited AI Q&A. Built a campaign finance engine using probabilistic entity resolution to cross-reference local donors against federal FEC records, revealing multi-hop PAC funding chains. Deployed across multiple campaigns leading up to the LA local election primaries.
Built the engineering organization and core platform from the ground up for a civic tech organization making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring. Shipped the LA Disaster Relief Navigator (6,000+ personalized plans, 30,000 residents reached), delivered a HIPAA-certified Outreach App replacing paper notes with structured data, and launched a public shelter availability directory. Scaled the engineering team from zero, building a servant-led culture with hiring pipelines, sprint cadences, and RFC processes. Co-authored technical grant proposals that secured the AWS Imagine Grant and other institutional funding.
Ran foundational platform engineering, consolidating teams and instituting stakeholder forums to improve cross-domain delivery. Cut operational spend across AWS, Datadog, and CircleCI through targeted architecture reviews. Championed Atlantis/Terraform automation to reduce infrastructure change lead times and operational toil. Started an engineering book club and partnered with security to set enterprise-wide standards for observability and incident response.
Scaled the engineering organization from the ground up and directed the migration from Linode to AWS and Vagrant to Docker, establishing zero-downtime deployments and enterprise monitoring with Datadog. Built interview processes, career growth reviews, and an internship pipeline. Advocated for and implemented a 9/80 schedule and company 401(k). Authored on-call playbooks that significantly reduced MTTR.
Stabilized critical production Kafka infrastructure and spearheaded cloud optimization that recovered approximately $1.5M in annual spend. Standardized enterprise data science on Python with shared extraction and featurization libraries, accelerating model delivery. Championed an RFC-driven culture across the engineering organization, driving initiatives for secrets management, infrastructure-as-code, and environment consolidation.
Architected enterprise CI/CD pipelines (AWS, Terraform, Docker, Jenkins) and authored core configuration management tooling used across the internal container-based cloud. Founded an enterprise-wide Python community of practice, authored an engineering interview survival guide, and mentored internal talent transitioning into software engineering roles.
Led development of a real-time physically based Monte Carlo ray tracer in C++ and CUDA using NVIDIA OptiX, cited by defense customers as an industry discriminator. Directed an Arduino-based flight payload from inception through physical testing. Engineered wireless nodes for acoustic arrays and rescued a mission-critical OpenVMS data acquisition system. Clearance: Secret with SSBI.
Technical range
Education
UCLA
M.S. Systems Engineering, focus in Embedded Control
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
B.S. Electrical & Computer Systems Engineering · Economics Minor