Staff Software Engineer & Fractional Technical Advisor

My ideal role is a fractional or contract engagement where I'm close enough to the founders to help shape how the business plan and the technical plan reinforce one another. My perspective is pragmatic regarding tradeoffs. I do my best work with people who'd prefer to hear "I'm not sure yet, but here's how we'd find out" than a confident guess. In practice that looks like architecting and building data-heavy systems, while staying in the conversation about strategy. I love startups and especially admire founders who bring together multiple practices and viewpoints. I stay hands-on where it has the most leverage, because the best technical judgment comes from people still close enough to the code to keep it honest.

I came to engineering sideways. I studied world languages and philosophy, the kind of majors that get asked "but what will you do with that?" Then I spent years teaching. That's where I learned to pick up a new domain fast and explain it to people who don't speak its language yet. When I found programming, it didn't feel like a career change; It felt like a homecoming. It had everything I already loved about language and logic: clarity, structure, translating between audiences. Now one of the audiences just happens to be machine(s). In grad school for software engineering I leaned into object-oriented design and database management. I've spent my technical career since in backend and data-heavy work. After enough years building inside other people's companies, I decided to build and advise on my own.

I do my best work at small, scrappy places where everyone actually knows each other. The right problem and the right people, and I'd join as a technical cofounder or work fractionally with an early team. What I want is urgency without the theater. I'd rather be on a team that argues things out, goes to lunch together, and takes a walk when the weather's good. I'm in the Twin Cities and I'd love to get to sit in the room with colleagues, although am happy working remotely for a company that to builds camaraderie in other ways.

For me the "right problem" just means a real one, where building it well actually helps someone. A lot of my experience is in ecommerce and SaaS, and I've come to value those spaces for a specific reason: the customer always has other options, so you can't coast on a problem that isn't really there. I'd love to bring the same approach of quick and responsive builds aimed at a real need to other domains. I lean toward data-heavy work, but I think good data creates value almost anywhere, and more so as AI makes the rest of building easier.