Discovery
We sit with the idea until it is a real product, not a pile of wishes. What we are building, who it is for, what we will not do.
ZEROBEARING
Dave
Bradford
I help businesses ship software. Agents write the code. I design the systems. Thirty years of shipping, now at agent speed.
How I work.
We figure out the product. I design it. Agents build and verify it. It ships when it holds up.
Design and planning
I draw how the pieces fit, what can break, and what we ship first.
Grilling and prototyping
Humans and agents align on the thinking. We tease out the unknowns, nail the details, and put a thin version in your hands you can click.
Implementing
A team of agents writes the software. I set the work, review the output, and keep the shape honest.
Shipping
Early and often. Live beats perfect. Agents verify the work before it ships.
Experience.
Teams that hired me. What I did.
Gierd
Grew the engineering team from 10 to 35 people. Then went back to building. Took a data platform from nothing to live.
Daasity
First engineer in the door. Built the data platform. Grew the team from zero to 25 people.
Zerobearing Enterprises, LLC
My company. Products and client work. One person.
Blue Rocket
Five years of contract work on their software, remote.
CircleSavvy
Helped design and build the product.
Pear Sports
Web and mobile software for their devices. Contract, then on staff.
TED-Ed
Features for teachers and students on ed.ted.com.
More on LinkedIn
Places I have worked.
Companies that put me on live products.
Gierd2024-2026
Daasity2017-2024
Blue Rocket2013-2018
CircleSavvy2012-2016
Pear Sports2010-2015
TACTIC Race Solutions2011-2014
Odoclub2007-2014
TED-Ed2012-2013
twitterfeed2009-2010
chi.mp2008-2009
Brandgineers2007-2008
mSnap2007
Sharp Healthcare2005-2006
Affinity Development Group2002-2005
Advanced Reservation Systems2002
BDC Technologies1999-2002
Cyberworks1997-1999
PennySaver USA1996
Recently shipped.
Three proving grounds I build and ship solo, with agents. Where I tinker, stay curious, and keep learning. All live in production.
The Feedback Agent
People leave feedback without a name. AI clarifies it without flattening their voice. Live.
thefeedbackagent.comRails AI
My toolkit for making agents build Rails to my standard: architecture, tests, and security. The same rigor behind everything I ship.
rails-ai.devOmatalk
Local text-to-speech for Omarchy. Select text, press a key, hear it read back. Fully local, no network calls at runtime.
omatalk.zerobearing.comI'm Dave.
I'm Dave Bradford. I have been building software since 1996 and shipping on Rails since 2006. The code was never the job. The systems and the architecture are, and that has been true from the start. Give me a rough idea and I build the whole thing, the product and the platform under it.
Most of my career has been startups: wearing every hat and learning the business as closely as the code. I build things that hold up in production. Data platforms I started from nothing still run today, ingesting billions of rows a day and driving the decisions those businesses need. I grew the teams around them too, from a handful of engineers to dozens.
Right now I'm shipping my own products with my own team of agents. It is where I build and prove the strategies I would bring to your project: the systems and processes that get agents building real software.
What I believe.
- Keep it simple. Scale only when you need to.
- Privacy and security come first, not as an afterthought.
- I back opensource. I back self-hosting.
- The cloud isn't always the answer.
- Remove dependencies whenever possible.
1996Building software sinceBillions/dayRows ingested, still in productionStartupsVeteran of many
What people say.
People who have worked with me, in their words.
He introduced AI-augmented development and agentic automations that acted as a force multiplier for our engineering output.
An extremely talented and multi-faceted programmer, who stood fast on the basis of building products correctly.
He taught me so much about Ruby on Rails, software engineering best practices, and software architecture.