Resume
Application and Platform Engineering, Distributed Systems, and AI Orchestration. Senior Staff Engineer and Technical Lead.
Denver, Colorado
Senior Staff backend engineer, 24+ years, hands-on at every level and leading from the code. Ten years on the email channel behind Zendesk Support (90,000+ customers, 60M+ emails a day): built the Email Storage Service in Go and the email-parsing library, led Email Status from RFC to shipped product, and wrote most of the agentic workflows and guardrails the email team runs its SDLC on. Earlier: Best Buy's developer API platform; nearly seven years at Wells Fargo. Volunteer structural and wildland firefighter and EMT in Colorado.
Apr 2026 – Present
Founder & Principal Engineer · Elevation Craft Technologies
Independent product work since leaving Zendesk: agentic products and production web apps, built and run end to end.
TypeScript · React · Next.js · Vercel · Neon Postgres · Anthropic · Zod · Resend · Google Workspace · Donorbox
Mar 2023 – Mar 2026
Senior Staff Engineer, Technical Lead · Zendesk
Built agentic AI delivery workflows, adopted by four engineering teams, while staying technical lead for Zendesk's email ingestion and ticket-creation infrastructure: 15M inbound and 45-55M outbound emails a day.
Ruby · Rails · TypeScript · React · Datadog · PagerDuty · MCP · LLM orchestration · AWS Bedrock · SageMaker · LibreChat · Claude Code · Codex · GitHub Copilot · Cursor · Go · gRPC · HashiCorp Vault · Kafka · GraphQL · StatsD · Vector · Grafana Loki · Java · Spring MVC · Kubernetes · Spinnaker · AWS · APM · Redis · Memcached
Jan 2021 – Present
Lieutenant, Structural Firefighter, Wildland Firefighter, EMT · Elk Creek Fire Protection District
Volunteer service alongside varied crews and agencies: structure fires, wildland fires, and medical calls - interior attack, defensive operations, progressive hose lays and fireline construction on initial attack, and emergency medical care across many calls. A volunteer lieutenant leads when ranking on scene and follows when scope or experience ranks first; a paramedic runs an ALS medical.
CO FF1 (Structural) · FFT2 (Wildland) · Haz Mat Ops · EMR (2021-2023) · EMT, IV-certified (2023-present)
Jul 2018 – Mar 2023
Staff Engineer, Technical Lead · Zendesk
Led backend architecture for ticket ingestion and notification systems and influenced engineering standards across multiple teams.
Ruby · Rails · React · Redux · Kubernetes · Spinnaker · Jsonnet · vendir · Kafka · Resque · Sidekiq · MySQL · zendesk/adrian · Arturo · OAuth 2.0 · Gmail API · S3 · Camo · Datadog · Sentry · Redis · Memcached
Oct 2015 – Jul 2018
Senior Software Engineer · Zendesk
Senior contributor on the email infrastructure platform handling inbound and outbound processing at the scale above.
Ruby · Rails · Ember · React · Redux · Artifactory · LocalStack · Redis · Memcached
Jun 2015 – Jun 2018
Product Designer & Engineer (part-time, concurrent) · Origin Meals
Freelance engagement alongside full-time work: untangled a meal-delivery company's order-management and recurring-subscription problems, migrated its subscriber base, redesigned the storefront, and built the back-of-house ERP the kitchen ran on.
Ruby · Meteor · Firebase · Shopify · Liquid · Stripe · JavaScript
Feb 2015 – Oct 2015
Web Application Developer, Core UI and Checkout · Best Buy (contract)
Built Node.js applications supporting server-side rendering and client experiences in high-traffic ecommerce flows.
Node.js · JavaScript
Feb 2014 – Feb 2015
Architect, Developer APIs and Platform · Best Buy (contract)
Architected the external Developer API ecosystem and portal, enabling scalable third-party integrations.
Java · Ruby
Oct 2012 – Feb 2014
Ruby Developer, Integration Engineering · Best Buy (contract)
Built a Rails marketplace automation platform that listed, priced, and synced Best Buy open-box and clearance inventory on eBay.
Ruby · Rails · Postgres
Jul 2009 – Oct 2012
Senior Web Developer · Wells Fargo
Led the move to Gradle builds and Hudson, worked on the team's move from SOAP and JPF services to RESTful Spring MVC, and grew into a trusted mentor on the team. Selected as Wells Fargo Technology Operations Group Top Performer.
Java · Spring MVC · Backbone.js · Maven · Gradle · Hudson
Jul 2007 – Jun 2009
Web Application Developer · Wells Fargo
Built and shipped the internal Wealth Management CRM for Private Banking and the Banker Loan Information System as an integrated companion product.
Java · Spring MVC · Backbone.js · SOAP · REST
Feb 2006 – Jun 2007
Software Consultant, contracted to Wells Fargo · Modis International
Consulting engineer on Wells Fargo web applications ahead of converting to a full-time role in 2007.
Java
Sep 2004 – Sep 2006
Intern, Web Development · TCF Bank
Built an intranet CMS on ColdFusion MX.
ColdFusion MX
Jun 2002 – May 2003
Web Designer & Developer · i2m (Idea to Market)
Designed and built the company website for founder Bruce Winkler in ColdFusion.
ColdFusion
Sep 2001 – May 2003
Undergraduate Research Assistant · University of Wisconsin, Madison
Fortran-to-C conversion for Bormin Huang's lossless compression research on three-dimensional hyperspectral sounder satellite data.
C · Fortran
Backend & Distributed Systems
Reliability & Delivery
Languages & Frameworks
AI & Agents
Security & Compliance
Leadership
Computer Science coursework · 2004 - 2005
Transferred back to Minnesota for the TCF Bank internship; Wells Fargo contract work followed, and the full-time Wells Fargo offer came before a degree did.
Computer Science coursework · AI concentration · 2001 - 2004
Machine learning, backpropagation neural networks, fuzzy logic, image recognition, and heuristics.
Computer Science coursework · 1999 - 2001
Where the coursework started, before transferring to a bigger program.
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