About
Hospitality to Tech
Professional History
I spent 15 years in professional kitchens — James Beard-nominated restaurants, 600-cover brunches, teams of 40. That world teaches you one thing above all: execution under pressure is really about building systems that don't break when things get chaotic.
The transition to software felt natural because the core problem is the same. You have constraints — time, tools, team bandwidth — and you need to build something that performs reliably under real conditions. Whether that's a dinner service for 200 or a containerized dev environment managing encrypted secrets.
Now I build developer tools, desktop applications, and infrastructure. My work spans Tauri apps with Rust backends, 3D knowledge visualizers in Three.js, codebase analysis engines with Tree-sitter, and AI coding tool integrations. I work across TypeScript, Rust, Swift, and Python — choosing the right tool for each problem rather than forcing everything through one stack.
Philosophy
Design Philosophy
Good tools should be invisible. The best systems are the ones you don't notice because they just work — they anticipate the next need, handle the edge cases, and stay out of your way. I approach design through constraints: what are the real limits, and how do you build something that performs within them? The creative work is in turning limitations into features, not in ignoring them.
Development Philosophy
Lean and readable. Security first, then performance, then everything else. I don't over-engineer — every abstraction needs to earn its place. I choose the right language and framework for each problem rather than reaching for the same hammer every time. Code should teach what it does through clear naming and structure, not through comments explaining clever tricks.
Career Philosophy
I build things that matter — tools that make other people more effective, systems that hold up under real conditions, infrastructure that you can trust. The hospitality mindset carries over directly: anticipate needs, communicate clearly, care about the details that most people skip, and keep quality high when things get chaotic. I'm looking for teams that build serious tools and value operational thinking alongside technical craft.
The Person Behind the Code
I believe the best engineering comes from people who've built things under real pressure — not theoretical pressure, but the kind where the room is full, the clock is running, and quality still has to be non-negotiable. Kitchens taught me that. Code lets me keep doing it.