I build data systems and a local politics podcast

SAI360

Senior Director, Data Engineering

Continuing the Plural team's mission inside SAI360 as a data engineering and AI shop, focused on horizon scanning across the policymaking landscape: legislative and regulatory data.

• Proofed DuckDB + SQLMesh as the basis of our data warehouse strategy
• Technical leadership aligning data delivery and AI insights for multiple teams
• Infrastructure build and data engineering support for AI team
• Maintain Open States: the best open/free dataset on US federal and state legislation

Plural (formerly Civic Eagle)

First employee hire. Wore the hat the team needed me to wear, from solo developer to Chief Technology Officer to Chief Data Officer and back to CTO. Fostered a culture of inclusion, respect, collaboration, and best practices. We became a remote-first team operating successfully with team members across three continents.

Helped pitch to investors in order to raise Seed and Series A funding. Built data pipelines and tooling to handle thorny data quality issues. Wanted a break from management and returned to individual contributor role.

• Hired and managed engineering through Series A — culture via tools, docs, 1:1s, retreats
• Built cloud services using infrastructure-as-code across GCP and AWS
• Solved key data-quality bottlenecks via automated monitoring
• PDF text extraction system supporting core product features
• Built initial product offering as a fullstack React/JS web app + data ingestion

Trilogy Education Services

Bootcamp Instructor

Taught a six-month full-stack JavaScript bootcamp with the University of Minnesota via Trilogy.

Savvysherpa

DevOps Engineer

Created tools and improved processes for an international development team. Technical leadership in achieving standards compliance and security in the cloud.

Origin Eight

Senior Developer

Delivered a wide range of solutions to clients, from rescuing old codebases to creating new functionality from wireframes. Worked remotely, sometimes client-facing.

Headwaters Software

Senior Developer

Developed fullstack software features to improve core products (www.fisdap.net), both back-end logic and front-end interfaces. Performed duties as primary systems administrator during most of the period.

Supermega Design (formerly IDC WebDev)

Co-owner, Lead Developer

Boutique web development shop specializing in Drupal: custom interfaces, modules, and integrations for small and mid-sized clients across the for-profit, nonprofit, and political worlds.

Macalester College

B.A. Sociology, minor in Media Studies