I came into software from a completely different path.
01Hydrogeology
I started in hydrogeology: the study of how water moves underground, through systems you can never see directly. The work is reading patterns out of incomplete data, building a model of how something behaves, and testing it against what the ground actually does. That way of thinking came with me into everything I’ve built since.
Fig. 01Section
01
Where it began
I came to hydrogeology after two years of engineering at Thompson Rivers University. The field pulled me in because it had all of it at once — mathematics, physics, modelling and system dynamics. Finishing the degree meant transferring to Simon Fraser University in Burnaby for the final four years, and it was there, in 2017, that I wrote code and thought about system design for the first time.
Fig. 02Readings
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What the work taught
It was a rigorous program, split between the field and the lecture hall. It taught me how to work systems I could only measure indirectly, how to model them, and how to manage my own time. The problems were things like the sustainability of aquifer systems, the geochemistry of groundwater and petroleum, and computing flow values through one program after another.
Fig. 03Crossing
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The move away
Once I had learned to code, I was hooked — but I was years into the degree and close to the end, so I saw it through, even knowing I didn’t want that career. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, so when COVID hit I got my real estate licence, and I’ve been practising for six years since, building and coding the whole way through. Now it’s time to go at what I actually love, full force.
Fig. 01 / where I started
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01 Hydrogeology
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02Real estate
My background is in earth science and real estate, but over time I became increasingly interested in building software to solve problems I was experiencing myself.
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Getting into real estate
A line or two on how real estate started for you.
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The recurring problem
A line or two on the problem you kept running into.
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Deciding to build
A line or two on why you built a tool instead of finding one.
Fig. 02 / the problems I lived
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02 Real estate
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03Internal tools→04Shipping products
What started as learning how to build simple tools gradually turned into full products used by real people.
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The first tool
A line or two on the first thing you built for yourself.
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Someone else using it
A line or two on when it first reached another person.
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Becoming a product
A line or two on turning it into something you shipped.
Fig. 03 / solving my own → used by real people
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03 Internal tools→ 04 Shipping products
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05Design engineering
The part I enjoyed most wasn’t only writing code. It was taking an idea, understanding the problem, designing the experience, building the system and turning it into something people could actually use — which is what pushed me toward design engineering and full-stack product development.
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Design and code, together
A line or two on when the two stopped being separate jobs.
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How you work now
A line or two on the approach you bring to a product today.
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What comes next
A line or two on the kind of work or team you want next.
Fig. 05 / design × build × product
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05 Design engineering
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I like working across the whole product.
01
Design
Product thinking
UI / UX
Interaction design
Design systems
Prototyping
02
Engineering
Full-stack development
Frontend systems
APIs
Databases
Authentication
Performance
03
Product
Problem discovery
User feedback
Iteration
Shipping
Analytics
Growth thinking
02 / The toolkit
A working set of tools I reach for, not a scoreboard.
01Next.js
02React
03TypeScript
04Python
05Tailwind CSS
06PostgreSQL
07Neon
08Prisma
09Clerk
10NextAuth
11Redis
12Vercel
13AWS
14Google Cloud
15Azure
16Cloudflare
17Docker
18Kubernetes
19Git
20ESLint
21Prettier
03 / How I work
Think→Design→Build→Test→Ship
01
Understand the problem before building the solution.
02
Make the experience clear before adding complexity.
03
Use the simplest architecture that can scale with the product.
04
Put the product in front of real users and listen.
05
Finish the thing, learn from it, and improve it.
04 / Outside the terminal
Real estate
Pokémon
Golf
Building businesses
Next / Career direction
Looking forthe right team.
I’m interested in roles where design, engineering and product overlap — especially teams building ambitious software where I can stay close to both the user experience and the code.