These days I care less about titles and more about doing meaningful work with people who take it seriously. I show up prepared, I say what I mean, and I don’t disappear when things get hard. I’ve learned that consistency, clear thinking, and doing what you said you’d do matters more than being the smartest person in the room.
I started out building simple systems but quickly found myself pulled toward complexity the kind that crosses domains and teams and demands more than code I got early exposure to government systems where I helped build an electronic filing platform for civil cases replacing piles of paperwork with a custom CRM and SharePoint integration that actually worked I was still writing reports for attorneys at the time but I was also the one figuring out how to get legacy AS400 data talking to our new C# tools sometimes writing my own printer drivers when nothing else fit
Eventually I got pulled into consulting where every day was a new stack a new client and a new set of priorities I designed transaction systems that had to function both online and offline handling payment integrations with Stripe AuthorizeNet and more I was the guy they sent in when there was no documentation no source control and a looming deadline I didn’t just write the code I helped them figure out what they needed in the first place and then showed them how to scale it
My role kept evolving I became the one who sat in on calls with VPs product owners infrastructure leads the translator between what the business wanted and what the tech could do I led a multi-year project to rebuild a proprietary matching algorithm on top of a brand new multi-tenant database platform that processed over a million records and ran hundreds of concurrent workflows every day I pushed the architecture forward built out secure application layers mentored junior devs and helped define the testing approach for mission critical paths
That same platform became the proving ground for the kind of work I still do now building intelligent systems that can adapt to change I introduced vector-based search into their tooling long before generative AI was hot and worked with early cognitive APIs to evaluate document relevance in complex matching flows later I rebuilt parts of that logic using OpenAI’s API layered with contextual RAG workflows and grounded search across warehouse structured data
Over time I became the person who could hold the whole picture in their head the frontend UX the backend process the data schema the security layer the business impact I started building internal tooling to save our team time command line interfaces data explorers even auto testers that wrapped our API responses in markdown summaries
And now most of what I do centers around AI not just calling a model but architecting platforms that treat LLMs as partners in decision making I work with OpenAI Assistants and Responses API customize models in Azure OpenAI and design convergent neural pipelines that blend user input system logic and model reasoning into something transparent and repeatable I’ve led teams of 20 or more on concurrent projects coached product leaders on where AI actually fits and helped execs turn vague AI goals into measurable platform outcomes
Everything I’ve done traces back to solving real problems for real people I build what works I teach teams how to keep it working and I always push for the next version that’s smarter simpler and stronger than the last
