Resumé+
I'm a tech leader who loves helping teams succeed and build great products. My background blends engineering, art, and hands-on software work. I started out thinking I'd be a mechanical engineer, earned an art degree, and found my stride in tech, where all my interests just seemed to come together. I have deep experience in front-end web development, a long list of creative strategies and tools, and a knack for making things work better, whether that's mentoring developers, introducing new tools, or jumping into a new tech stack. I care about building strong teams, solving real problems, and making the process enjoyable along the way.
As Rivet's first engineering manager hire, I made a significant impact during two critical years of the company's growth. During my tenure, we scaled from 14 to nearly 50 people, raised multiple funding rounds, broke ARR and customer acquisition milestones, and built up our team's capabilities across the board.
In my role, I've been responsible for many aspects of our engineering organization:
Process & Operations
Team Building & Leadership
Technical & Security
Beyond management, I also contributed directly to software development:
I joined Future as a seasoned developer and product leader with no experience in the team's tech stack. I quickly got up to speed building Flutter apps for iOS and contributing to an app with DNA from my previous startup - tools for entrepreneurs to get paid and keep their business finances separate from personal accounts.
My focus was on front-end mobile UI using Flutter. Beyond learning the tooling, I brought my knowledge of accessibility, design, and workflow dynamics to help shape the product and make it usable by larger audiences. While learning about CustomScrollViews, GestureDetectors, and the finer points of conforming to parent constraints, I also learned how to integrate name-brand development shops and high-profile design agencies into the process of building a complex app for a small startup.
I took on the role of technical co-founder for Farebox, a SaaS product providing booking and scheduling software for charter bus businesses, along with all the tools needed to run bus operations.
Key technologies included Node.js, Express, Vue.js, MongoDB, Redis, Stripe, Mapbox, Postmark, Twilio, Nuxt, and Particle IoT. During development, I learned containerization with Docker, testing with Cypress, CI/CD with Heroku, and more.
As expected at a startup, I wore many hats: visual designer, interaction designer, developer, product manager, documentation writer, and customer service representative. We built a complete suite of tools for charter bus operators and run The Detroit Bus Company and other clients on the platform. Farebox has processed hundreds of reservations, coordinated dozens of vehicles and drivers, and handled hundreds of thousands of dollars in customer payments.
As Experience Director at Rocket Companies, I worked at the intersection of a large product management, creative, and development team building the next generation of Rocket Pro.
Rocket Pro is a third-party mortgage origination tool that makes the most powerful parts of the Quicken Loans technology stack available as a SaaS product to select partners. Depending on the partnership level, users could interact with two different but related products - one for "retail" partnerships and another for traditional third-party mortgage brokers.
I worked with product and engineering leadership to focus a creative team of designers, information architects, user testing professionals, and copywriters. I was directly involved in evolving the retail version of Rocket Pro from a first-generation prototype that shared DNA with the consumer-facing Rocket Mortgage stack to a second-generation product tailored for retail partnership and third-party origination.
This work covered typical SaaS challenges like design system integration, onboarding experiences, customer support interfaces, and complex resource management. I also learned the entire mortgage origination process and helped develop interfaces that surface critical information about the many ways loans can fail underwriting requirements.
This role was a departure from my usual tech-focused work, and I learned a great deal about user testing and validation, structured approaches to market and user research, and product management.
I led a software team at General Motors focused on creating tools for developers building apps for GM’s in-vehicle infotainment system. My roles on this team included senior developer, lead architect, product owner, and dev team manager.
On that team I helped build and release two industry-first products - A desktop app for emulating the in-vehicle runtime context called the NGI Emulator, and an in-vehicle app which can turn virtually any production vehicle into a secure infotainment app testing platform called GM Dev Client.
I followed a contract-to-hire path to full time employment at GM, and my experience at Detroit Labs (below) was really the start of my time working in-vehicle apps and tools.
Detroit Labs is a mobile app development shop in downtown Detroit with recognizable clients like Jimmy John's and Domino's. I worked on-site at General Motors in a contract role alongside Detroit Labs developers, GM employees, and other agency staff. I focused on in-vehicle apps and was the lead developer for vehicle emulation software helping outside developers build for the latest GM vehicles. I worked in developer, lead developer, architect, and team-lead roles, while also hosting and participating in hackathons centered around the software I helped create.
In this role, I learned GM's proprietary app framework (NGI), built a cross-platform desktop app with Electron, authored Node.js modules, and gained extensive experience with Mocha, Jasmine, Webpack, Angular 1.x, Vue.js, and other modern front-end technologies.
Since 2015, I’ve been a full service vendor for Slows’ web site. This includes design and implementation of the website, developing new features (such as delivery verification and beer menu searching), a custom intake process for catering requests, and design and technical consultation for the slows online retail presence.
Team Detroit was Ford Motor Company’s ad agency, and I worked on a project team building the next generation of the Ford Credit websites. I worked with people in the US and abroad building Angular, Node and AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) based applications to manage online auto loan and lease accounts. In my role, I contributed to architectural decisions at most points of our technology stack, owned our Agile and release processes, and worked on daily front end development tasks.
Apprend focused on teaching people about software and technology through affordable, instructor-led classroom learning for in-demand skills. My role included running the company, developing curriculum, hiring instructors, managing class registration, marketing events, website design and development, plus other founder responsibilities.
I freelance under the name 13protons, and provide a range of services for web based projects.
Apigee was an API Gateway services provider that Google Cloud Platform acquired in 2014.
I had two major roles at Apigee. First, I supported the client sales process by building demo and proof-of-concept mobile apps with prospective clients' branding to show how they could benefit from Apigee's API technology.
I also joined the IoT team for over a year helping build what became Zetta and Apigee Link. Zetta was an ambitious IoT orchestration system including a discovery server and gateway, device firmware for IoT devices of varying capabilities, and a visualization tool for monitoring device fleets. My roles included interaction design, web design, front-end implementation with Angular/Node.js/Ruby stack, and tutorial content development.
Both roles involved working with new and emerging technology while coordinating with teams worldwide, including Detroit, SF Bay Area, London, and Bangalore.
I taught classes for Girl Develop It Detroit on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I delivered pre-set curriculum in multi-day teaching formats and developed some of my own curriculum along the way.
I taught classes on a range of technical topics, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and Ruby. My experiences here led directly to starting my own company to fill a gap in tech class offerings in Detroit.
I managed all design-related components of the Detroit Regional Chamber's online presence. I photographed for their magazine, the Detroiter (circulation ~20k), and developed applications and plugins for their website platforms. Later in my tenure, I helped project manage the redesign and re-implementation of detroitchamber.com/.
Other Projects
I designed the branding and web presence for API Craft Conference while helping organize and run the event. It was an annual conference held in Open Space format to bring together leading API minds and advance the state of the art.
The conference asked: "Where do we lead the APIs of tomorrow?"
BFA - Graphic Design and Photography, Eastern Michigan University