About
I'm a Staff-level engineer with 20 years of experience building backend infrastructure and distributed systems. After leaving CarGurus in February 2026, I took a few months for a family matter that's now fully resolved, then channeled my time into the hardest technical challenge I could design: a distributed real-time game engine that targets 10,000+ concurrent players without time dilation.
Career highlights
CarGurus
Principal Engineer. Shipped production ML systems that processed millions of vehicle listings daily. Led the decomposition of a monolithic Java application serving millions of daily users into domain-aligned microservices. The work involved careful migration planning, feature flags for gradual rollout, and maintaining service-level objectives throughout the transition.
Cimpress / Vistaprint
Rearchitected the tax calculation system for a global e-commerce platform. Distributed systems work at scale across multiple regions, handling the complexity of international tax rules while maintaining sub-100ms response times for the core checkout flow.
Apocoplay
Founded a game studio and shipped multiplayer titles. Built a real-time server engine that reduced server costs by 60% and cut development time significantly compared to industry-standard approaches. This experience directly informs the Black Skies architecture — I know what worked, what failed, and what I'd do differently.
Earlier career
HubSpot (marketing automation platform engineering), First Republic Bank / Gradifi (fintech systems for student loan repayment benefits). Breadth across fintech, marketing tech, and consumer-facing systems.
What I'm looking for
I'm looking for Staff or Senior Staff IC roles where I can own complex technical problems in distributed systems, backend infrastructure, or platform engineering. I care about engineering rigor, clear architecture, and building systems that are observable and maintainable. I'm not interested in management tracks — I want to stay hands-on and deep in the technology.