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about the engineer behind forge

I write code that outlasts the sprint.

I started programming at fourteen, building janky PHP scripts on shared hosting. That spark turned into a career spanning twelve years of full-stack engineering across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise platform teams. I have shipped billing systems that process millions in transactions, observability tooling that reduced mean-time-to-recovery by forty percent, and component libraries used by hundreds of engineers daily.

My engineering philosophy centers on three principles: clarity over cleverness, ownership over handoffs, and measurable outcomes over feature counts. I do not chase hype stacks. I pick tools that let a small team move fast without accumulating regret. When I join a project, I bring working code, actionable opinions, and a genuine interest in the problem domain.

Outside of engineering, I contribute to open-source developer tools, write about systems thinking and software delivery on my blog, mentor early-career developers through pair-programming sessions, and spend time hiking and reading about distributed systems architecture. I believe that well-rested engineers build better products, and I structure my work to sustain velocity across months and years rather than burning bright for a single quarter.

FD
Forge Developer
Senior Systems Engineer
Available for new engagements
12+
Years Experience
40+
Projects Shipped
8
OSS Libraries
Location East Coast, US (UTC-5)
Languages English (native), Spanish (conversational)
Work Style Remote / Async-first
Engagements Contract, consulting, full-time
Technical proficiency

Skills breakdown by domain

I invest deeply in a small set of tools and paradigms rather than surface-skimming a dozen frameworks. Every bar here reflects production experience, not tutorial completions.

Frontend Engineering

React / Next.js96%
TypeScript95%
Tailwind CSS / Design Systems92%
Web Performance / Core Web Vitals89%
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)85%
State Management (Zustand, Jotai, Redux)90%

Backend and Systems

Rust88%
Node.js / Express / Fastify93%
PostgreSQL / SQL Design91%
Redis / Caching Strategies84%
GraphQL / REST API Design90%
Message Queues (NATS, RabbitMQ)78%

DevOps and Infrastructure

Docker / Containerization90%
CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)88%
AWS / Cloudflare / Vercel86%
Terraform / IaC74%
Observability (Grafana, Datadog)82%
Kubernetes70%

Product and Leadership

Technical Architecture92%
Code Review and Mentorship94%
Product Thinking / Discovery87%
Agile / Delivery Management85%
Technical Writing88%
Stakeholder Communication90%
Toolkit

Technologies I use in production

Not a bingo card of logos. Every item here is something I have deployed, debugged under pressure, and would confidently use again on the next project.

Languages and Runtimes
TypeScript JavaScript (ES2024) Rust Python Go SQL Bash Node.js Deno Bun
Frontend Frameworks and Libraries
React 19 Next.js 15 Vite Tailwind CSS v4 Radix UI Zustand React Query Framer Motion Storybook Vitest Playwright
Backend and Data
PostgreSQL Redis Supabase Prisma Drizzle ORM Fastify tRPC GraphQL NATS SQLite
Infrastructure and Tooling
Docker Kubernetes GitHub Actions Terraform AWS (S3, Lambda, ECS) Cloudflare Workers Vercel Grafana Datadog Sentry
Career history

Professional experience timeline

Every role shaped how I think about software delivery. From startup velocity to enterprise stability, each chapter taught something I still carry forward.

2023 - Present
Current

Senior Platform Engineer — Velocity Labs

Lead the platform team responsible for internal developer tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and a shared component library used across twelve product teams. Architected a migration from a monolithic Rails application to a service-oriented TypeScript and Rust stack, cutting average API response time from 380ms to 45ms. Introduced structured observability using OpenTelemetry, reducing mean time to resolution on production incidents from four hours to under thirty minutes. Built an internal release dashboard that replaced a fragmented mix of Slack threads, wikis, and spreadsheets.

React Rust TypeScript PostgreSQL OpenTelemetry
2020 - 2023

Full-Stack Engineer — Arcline Systems

Core engineer on a B2B SaaS platform serving logistics and supply chain companies. Built the billing module that processed over two million dollars in monthly transactions with zero downtime during peak periods. Designed and implemented role-based access control, audit logging, and a multi-tenant data isolation layer. Led the frontend migration from Angular to React, establishing the component library and design token system still in use today. Mentored three junior engineers through their first production deployments.

React Node.js PostgreSQL Redis Stripe
2017 - 2020

Software Engineer — Draftwerk Studio

Built customer-facing web applications for a digital product studio working with early-stage startups. Delivered MVPs for six different companies across fintech, healthcare scheduling, and e-commerce verticals. Developed a reusable project scaffold with authentication, payments, and admin panels that cut initial development time by forty percent. Introduced automated testing practices that reduced post-launch bug reports by over sixty percent compared to previous studio projects.

React Node.js MongoDB AWS Docker
2014 - 2017

Junior Developer — Brightpath Digital

Started as an intern and grew into a contributing engineer within six months. Worked across the full stack on marketing sites, internal tools, and client dashboards. Learned the discipline of code review, version control hygiene, and writing clear documentation. Built my first production API, deployed my first Docker container, and shipped my first feature that real paying customers relied on daily.

JavaScript PHP MySQL jQuery Linux
Education

Formal credentials

B.S. Computer Science
2014
State University, College of Engineering

Concentrated in systems programming and distributed computing. Senior capstone project built a real-time collaborative code editor with operational transformation conflict resolution. Graduated with departmental honors and a 3.7 GPA. Teaching assistant for Data Structures and Algorithms for two semesters.

AWS Solutions Architect Associate
2021
Amazon Web Services Certification

Validated proficiency in designing distributed systems on AWS, including VPC networking, IAM policies, S3 lifecycle management, Lambda event-driven architectures, and cost optimization strategies for production workloads.

Rust Certified Professional
2023
Ferrous Systems Training Program

Completed the advanced Rust systems programming course covering ownership patterns, async runtime internals, unsafe code auditing, and performance profiling with flamegraphs. Applied learnings directly to production services handling high-throughput data processing pipelines.

Continuous learning

Beyond the classroom

Open Source Contributions

Active contributor to several developer tool projects. Maintained a Vite plugin for automated API type generation with over two thousand GitHub stars. Contributed performance patches to a popular React table library that reduced re-render cycles by thirty percent for large datasets. Regularly review and triage issues on projects I depend on.

Conference Talks and Workshops

Presented at three regional developer conferences on topics including practical Rust adoption for web teams, building observable frontend applications, and migrating legacy systems without stopping feature delivery. Conducted internal workshops at two companies on TypeScript patterns, testing strategy, and code review culture.

Technical Writing

Published over thirty articles on engineering topics including API design, frontend performance, release engineering, and team productivity. Articles have been featured in JavaScript Weekly, Rust Times, and several curated engineering newsletters with a combined readership of over fifty thousand developers monthly.

Mentorship and Community

Mentor two early-career engineers through weekly pair programming sessions focused on real project work rather than abstract exercises. Active in developer communities on Discord and GitHub Discussions. Believe strongly that teaching is the fastest way to solidify your own understanding and find gaps in your mental models.

Engineering philosophy

How I think about building software

Clarity over cleverness

Readable code is maintainable code. I name things carefully, keep functions small, write documentation where it matters, and avoid abstractions that trade short-term elegance for long-term confusion. The next engineer reading this code should understand it in minutes, not hours.

Own it end to end

I do not throw code over the wall. When I build a feature, I think about deployment, monitoring, error handling, edge cases, and the support engineer who will debug it at two in the morning. Ownership means the feature works in production, not just on your local machine.

Measure before you optimize

Gut feelings about performance are often wrong. I instrument before I optimize, set baselines before I refactor, and validate improvements with real data. This discipline prevents wasted effort and keeps the team focused on changes that actually move metrics customers care about.

Ship small, ship often

Large pull requests are where quality goes to die. I prefer small, reviewable changes with clear intent. Feature flags, progressive rollouts, and incremental migrations reduce risk and give the team fast feedback loops that catch problems before they reach every user.

Tests are documentation

A well-written test suite tells the next developer what the code is supposed to do. I write tests that describe behavior, not implementation details. When tests break, they should tell you what went wrong and why, not just that something changed.

Sustainable velocity

Speed without sustainability is just technical debt with extra steps. I build systems and habits that let teams move fast for years, not just sprints. That means investing in tooling, automation, documentation, and the health of the people doing the work.