Professional Experience
Fractional CTO
Nuthatch, LLC
Nov 2025 — Present
- Serving as a veteran technologist for hire, providing high-growth companies with the strategic oversight needed to scale infrastructure and product.
- Designing and deploying custom LiveKit agents that utilize RAG data to speak with domain authority on specific technical or business topics.
- Integrating advanced Speech Pattern Analysis, allowing AI agents to dynamically adjust tone and delivery based on user input.
- Architecting secure, local-first AI appliances to reason about proprietary data while maintaining strict privacy.
Software Engineering Manager
The Knot Worldwide
April 2020 — Nov 2025
- Rescued an antiquated fulfillment system from frequent failure to 100% operational perfection.
- Boosted team efficiency by 40% YOY through Agile board optimization and engineering coaching in conflict resolution.
- Pioneered AI integration to reason about internal company data, enhancing real-time customer support awareness and monitoring.
Senior Software Engineer
Cisco
Dec 2014 — April 2020
- Architected core fulfillment systems for multi-million dollar business telephone contracts.
- Built high-availability integrity services that verified 100% of services for 50,000+ customers.
- Developed custom internal tools using Symfony to streamline the ordering and integrity verification processes.
Founder & Technologist
NaplesRentals.com / Various
1996 — 2017
One of my billion-dollar ideas; I was building Airbnb years before Airbnb existed.
- Engineered and managed a vacation rental marketplace for 20 years solo—handling dev, sales, and support—connecting tens of thousands of travelers.
- Began career in 1996 with dial-up ISP support, eventually building out networks and managing IT for entire firms during the Seattle dot-com boom.
- Broad skills variety: I'm more than just a software engineer. I get deep into the work—software, load balancers, whatever it takes to get it done.
Profile
Veteran software engineering leader with vast experience transforming complex systems at firms like Cisco and The Knot Worldwide. Entrepreneurial technologist specializing in scaling products from 0 to 1 and rescuing critical infrastructure. A veteran "CTO for hire" capable of moving growing companies to the next level by bridging advanced AI implementation with battle-tested operational strategy. Nothing is impossible; we are only limited by our imaginations.
AI & Modern Tech
Voice Agents
LiveKit, Custom STT/TTS Pipelines, Speech Pattern Analysis, Prosody Adjustments
Generative AI
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), Local LLM Deployment (Ollama), Vector DBs
Core Languages
Node.js, PHP, Go, Rust (Active Study), SQL, MongoDB, Symfony
Leadership & Strategy
Strategic Thinking, Operational Excellence, Agile/Jira PM, Engineer Mentorship
Education
University of Washington
Bachelor in Journalism
Class of 2008
Interests
- Leveraging RAG for persona-based AI agents.
- Collaborative music composition apps using CRDTs.
- Disc Golf & Entrepreneurial Ventures.