AI-native engineer and engineering leader Most recently Sr. Principal Engineer and VP of Engineering at Gierd
Thirty years shipping production software, from first engineer to VP. I grew a data platform to billions of rows a day and the team around it to 25+. Today I run agent teams the way I ran engineering teams: I design the system, review every change, and own whether it works.
Open to hands-on engineering leadership or senior, staff, and principal engineer roles.
What I built, the teams I led, and what we shipped.
Sr. Principal Engineer and VP of Engineering
Moved engineering to AI-native development: stood up agents for code review, CI repair, and ticket triage, and as part of the applied AI team shipped agent automations across support, finance, and returns. A chargeback-evidence agent cut a day or two of manual work to minutes. Before that, led engineering from founding engineer to VP: hired the team, set the standards and SDLC, and shipped the multi-tenant Rails MVP in weeks.
Director of Platform Engineering
First engineer. Grew a couple of founder scripts into a Rails data platform processing billions of rows a day across Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift. Helped grow product and engineering to 25+ as customers went from 1 to 20+ brands, and stayed hands-on with infrastructure and ops as Director.
Senior Software Engineer
Built the course-mapping software behind MyRoundPro, TaylorMade's golf GPS and shot-tracking product on Microsoft Band, and the web app where golfers saw every shot plotted on the course.
Founding engineer, then lead and senior roles
Founding backend engineer at PEAR: chose the stack and built the API between the Square One heart-rate monitor and the coaching platform, on sale by 2012, then rejoined to port it to Rails. In parallel, a lead engineer taking RaceHQ, a white-label race-event SaaS, from concept to its first customers, plus Rails work for TED-Ed.
Original and only engineer on Odoclub from 2007 to 2014, alongside PEAR and RaceHQ. First engineer hire at mSnap, then Sharp Healthcare and five more teams, back to PennySaver USA in 1996.
The job hasn't changed: decide what to build, design the system, hold the bar. Agents do the typing now, and nothing ships until I've read the diff.
Move email delivery to background jobs #142
@@ -7,1 +7,3 @@77 gem "rails", "~> 8.0"8+ gem "sidekiq"9+ gem "redis"Changes requested
dave requested changes
All checks have passed
4 successful checks
I look for people who read source, cut dependencies, and solve the simple way first. Keyword lists are noise.
Before a team burns a cycle, we lock what we are building, who it is for, and what we will not do. Ambiguity is expensive; naming it early is cheap.
I draw how the pieces fit, what can break, and what ships first. That is the same craft I used as first engineer and as VP.
Agents write the code and run the checks. I decide whether it matches the product, the standards, and the security bar.
Products I designed and built with agent teams, held to the same review bar.
People leave feedback without a name. AI clarifies it without flattening their voice. Anonymous by design, and about 3.5k visitors a month before any marketing.
thefeedbackagent.comLocal text-to-speech for Omarchy, a Linux desktop setup. Select text, press a key, hear it read back. Fully local, no network calls at runtime.
omatalk.zerobearing.comThe review bar above, written down so agents meet it before I read the diff: architecture, tests, and security for Rails. Open source, MIT licensed, about 4k visitors a month.
rails-ai.devA Boise property management startup built as a case study: ground-up launch with agents handling the busywork so humans can run the business.
juniperdoors.comMy personal site: projects, downloads, and experiments, dressed up as a BBS terminal.
davebradford.devA group chat front door for builders. Join, share ideas, and collaborate on what you're shipping.
webuildit.devA deadline tracker for Idaho real estate agents. Upload an executed RE-21 package and AI pulls every deadline, each shown beside the clause it came from and counted in business days. Nothing reaches the agent's list until they confirm it.
idahore21.comA print-on-demand apparel idea for parents who find Gen Alpha slang ridiculous. Just a landing page for now. If it earns a launch list, it becomes a store.
snarkyparents.comI have been building software since 1996 and shipping on Rails since 2006, often as the first engineer in the door.
Most of my career has been startups. I wore every hat and learned the business as closely as the code. I built 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, up to 25+ engineers.
At Gierd I moved the team to AI-native development. Now I build everything with agent teams: I design the system, agents write the code, and I review every change.
Rails is where I go deepest. The stack still follows the product.
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.
It's been a privilege to work with you through all these years, going back to our time at Daasity. You've always been a leader for me.
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.
I enjoyed my career with you these past 15+ years. You were my Ruby/Rails Jedi master.
You've been an absolute pleasure to work with, and one of the most talented engineers I've worked with.
Building an AI-native engineering team? I'm looking for a hands-on leadership or senior, staff, or principal role.
dave commented
Solid Queue ships with Rails 8. Drop both gems and the Redis box.