Software Engineering Leadership
I build and lead engineering organizations that ship products people depend on. That has meant mobile platforms serving 27 million monthly users, release processes that teams trust, and engineers who grow into leaders. My path runs from founding an internet service provider, through security engineering and early DARPA artificial-intelligence research, to leading mobile engineering at scale.
Mindbody · Mobile engineering
I led the mobile team that created and maintained the largest catalog of individual, custom white-label apps on the App Store and Google Play. Each of more than 5,000 businesses had its own branded iOS and Android app under its own name, and together they served 27 million monthly active users.
SRI International · DARPA
I was building intelligent assistants two decades ago. On CALO, DARPA's multidisciplinary artificial-intelligence program, we integrated numerous AI technologies into a single cognitive assistant, and Siri was a notable spin-off. Along the way I co-authored a paper on user-initiated learning for adaptive interfaces.
On FAUST, a DARPA Machine Reading project, I helped integrate multiple machine-reading technologies into an automated reading system that makes the information in natural-language text accessible to formal reasoning systems.
Read the paper (PDF)Teams move fastest when everyone understands the goal, the constraints and why it matters. Then they own the how. My job is to make the direction unmistakable and clear the path.
I've spent more than two decades coaching people, from engineers growing into tech leads and managers to students growing into team captains. The best measure of a leader is the leaders they leave behind.
Pilots fly by checklist for a reason. Disciplined releases, clear on-call ownership and honest postmortems are what let teams ship boldly and sleep at night.
Fleetio
Led Fleetio's mobile engineering organization across iOS, Android, platform and release engineering, setting technical direction and coaching engineering managers and engineers through performance and career growth.
Mindbody
Set engineering vision and strategy for mobile (iOS and Android) and software security company-wide, leading a 30-person organization of developers, architects and QA engineers across multiple locations.
Mindbody
Grew the Android team's engineers in skill, problem solving and best practices, owned the quality and performance of the Android codebase, and partnered with the SVP of Software Engineering on department-wide process improvements.
Mindbody
Built the Mindbody consumer app (3 million+ installs and 83 million launches a year) and served as lead Android engineer on the Branded App team, delivering private-label apps for more than 5,000 businesses.
SRI International
Lead software engineer on government, DARPA and internal research programs in artificial intelligence, machine reading and mobile applications, owning architecture, development and integration from research through commercialization.
InfoGard Laboratories
Validated hardware and software cryptographic modules to FIPS 140, evaluated PIN entry devices against Visa and PCI standards, and designed the network security assessment practice for corporate and government clients.
Silicon Networking
Founded the San Fernando Valley's first internet service provider. Architected its network, wrote its billing and access-control software, hired and led a team of nine, grew it to more than 300 clients, and sold the business.
Leadership
Mobile & platform
Foundations
2020 – Present
Cal Poly Computer Science & Software Engineering
Advising the department head and faculty on how well the curriculum prepares graduates for the industry they are about to join.
2020 – 2023
City of San Luis Obispo Revenue Enhancement Oversight Committee
Appointed to review the city's voter-approved sales tax revenue and spending, reporting and making recommendations directly to the City Council.
2025 – Present
Civil Air Patrol, Vandenberg Composite Squadron 101
Leading a 70+ member volunteer squadron of adults and cadets, now at its highest membership since records began in 2000 and a Quality Cadet Unit Award winner in 2025 and 2026.
2003 – Present
Cal Poly Ballroom Dance Team
Coaching and mentoring student dancers and officers for more than two decades.
Django · MySQL · FreeBSD
Results, points tracking and entry checking for the Collegiate DanceSport Association. It is where my software and dance worlds meet.