About Me

I am a professional full stack software developer with a proven ability to work constructively and cohesively in dynamic teams of varying sizes. I have worked on numerous projects across the tech stack from frontend, to data, to backend, and infrastructure. I'm passionate about exploring new technologies to make a positive impact on society, and particularly interested in developer tooling, media streaming, data engineering, and the application of AI and Large Language Models to improve software development.

For fifteen years I performed as an orchestral musician (French Horn) with many orchestras across the United States, including several years frequently performing and touring with the San Francisco Symphony. You can read more about my musical background (and diagnoses of Focal Dystonia which brought my performing career to an end) in this Otia article.

I have also done stints as a brewer, a pack dog walker, and writing concert reviews for the San Francisco Classical Voice. My non-technical interests include reading, movies, sports, running, camping, traveling and generally being outdoors. I live in San Francisco with my wife and our adopted Muttville pomeranian.

Sample Projects

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NBA Game Analysis

Summarize play-by-play data scraped from the web for an NBA game, using Python. Data is loaded from a CSV, parsed to get specific categories of stats, and printed to the console in a legible format.

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Collaborate

A project management tool with many features of the popular Basecamp app, built with Ruby On Rails. Users can create an authenticated account with multiple projects. Projects can have many members (with varying permissions), discussion threads (with sub-threads), attachments (text or image files), and tasks (with sub-tasks).

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Messages

A micro-blogging service that replicates the functionality of Twitter (or X if you prefer), built with React and Rails. Users can create an authenticated account, post tweets, and follow other users. Tweets can be commented, liked, and retweeted.

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my_tetris

Recreating Tetris was a really fun way to learn about game architecture, while also focusing on the fundamentals of modern Javascript. Inspired by the work of Michael Karén, my Tetris also includes sound effects, background music, and the ability to swap pieces in/out to a 'hold' box.

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my_sqlite

A group of small projects completed in order to understand SQL and databases, specifically related to building web apps using Ruby on Rails.

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my_ls

my_ls my_ls behaves similarly to the linux ls command. Files are stored in a linked list and organized using merge-sort. It was built as part of a series of exercises to learn C and linux programming.

More on GitHub

Experience

Architect I: R&D - American Express (2025: Contract)

  • Conduct research, design solutions, and explore emergent technologies such as post-quantum cryptography and generative Al
  • Develop foundational frameworks, prototypes, and proofs of concept that pave the way for innovative applications and advancements aligned with organizational goals
  • Collaborate with internal organizations, external vendors, industry partners, and technology providers to evaluate, integrate and influence solutions shaping the direction of future innovations

Senior Software Engineer - Ark Project (2024 - 2025)

  • Architected and deployed custom end-to-end AI systems, with speech-to-text/text-to-speech and interactive video
  • Designed and implemented RAG-based AI solutions with custom training data for enhanced information retrieval
  • Architected full-stack Django applications, implementing features from database design to front-end development
  • Orchestrated containerized deployments using AWS services (EKS, ECR, RDS), Docker, and Kubernetes
  • Engineered and deployed healthcare API dashboard, fast-tracking technical review from 8 weeks to 3

Advanced Coders AI Training (Team Lead) - ScaleAI (2023 - 2024: Contract)

  • Train cutting-edge proprietary AI large language models to improve code writing ability in numerous languages, on projects ranging from computer science logic/reasoning to producing functional end-to-end applications.
  • Solve discrete, highly variable problems that involve engaging with LLM's as they learn to write functional and efficient code, including robust test cases to confirm code works efficiently and effectively.
  • Evaluate the quality of AI-generated code, including human-readable summaries.
  • Act as focal point of communication between 25+ team members and ScaleAI engineers/project managers.
  • Identify and resolve issues that affect project or team performance. Implement innovative solutions to overcome challenges as the team rapidly scales.

Software Engineer - Evercast (2021 - 2023)

  • Developed custom tool for Admin Portal using React/Typescript/Node for account verification emails, saving ~5-10 dev hours/week.
  • Automated process of deleting client recordings from AWS S3 using Python Boto3, helping reduce AWS costs by 70%.
  • Automated platform usage reports (PSQL, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud) to share data directly with senior management and support.
  • Debugged and documented services in Go (Room Scheduler) and C (Janus WebRTC server) to streamline developer onboarding.
  • Refactored authentication service (Typescript, Node) for Okta integration to satisfy strict security for global enterprise clients.

Developer Intern - Beezwax Datatools (2021)

Built and studied FileMaker applications with emphasis on Schema Design, Relational Database Normalization, Scripting, Record Manipulation, Auditing, UI/UX, and Event Management Conversion.

Software Engineer Fellow - Qwasar Silicon Valley (2019 - 2021)

Working both individually and as part of a small team, built many projects using numerous languages and frameworks, with a constant focus on the fundamentals of software engineering and architecture. Gave and received numerous peer code reviews, and made presentations to colleagues about specific concepts or previously completed projects.

Open Source Contributor - Mozilla Firefox (2019)

As a contributor to the devtools/debugger of Mozilla Firefox Web Browser, my code was reviewed and accepted by Mozilla engineers. I learned to digest and contribute to a large, complex modern Javascript codebase (React & Redux), worked with Mercurial (version control), and tools/libraries such as Flow and Codemirror. I also wrote unit tests for my code using Jest and Mochitest frameworks.

Student Software Engineer - Watch & Code (2018 - 2019)

Learned core concepts of software engineering, primarily by reading open source codebases. Projects include removing jQuery from a todo list so that it's just plain JavaScript, modifying a simple testing framework, replicating the native JS Array methods from scratch using Test Driven Development, and creating a library loading system.