Hi.
I'm David.
I’m a workflow and systems engineer who’s been building business-critical software since the dial-up era of the ’90s. I just spent 15 years at Apple.
Something has shifted. AI has changed what’s practical — and even what’s possible. More than anything I’ve seen before.
Let me show you how.
Great systems and products aren't accidents. They are built intentionally — designed backward from the outcome they're meant to create. At their best, they simply make life better.
Unfortunately, most organizations never get the chance to define that future — they're too busy surviving the present.
Paper trails. Approval theater. Status reports. Antiquated software. Endless meetings.
These exist for a reason — visibility, coordination, accountability. They matter. But they shouldn’t drain you to the point where your work suffers.
Bottlenecks aren't people problems. They're architectural problems.
Most friction isn't inevitable — it's inherited.
Over time, teams adapt to annoying processes and clunky tools until the broken things feel normal.
Redefining normal begins by simply asking:
"What would this feel like if things actually worked the way they should?"
We avoid changing the status quo because the barriers feel too big. Too technical. Too entrenched. Not enough time. Not enough resources.
We see what isn’t working — and assume we’re stuck with it. We're not.
AI tooling has expanded the playbook — to tackle the problems we thought too hard — and revive great ideas forgotten in a backlog.
AI multiplies what we’re capable of, enhancing productivity and creativity. It doesn't replace human ingenuity. It amplifies it.
You don't need to change everything at once. You just need a starting point.
Redefine one broken process. Replace one manual workflow. Give the team one small win and nothing will be off the table.
With intelligent tooling, execution now happens at design-level speed — compressing the time between vision and outcome.
Months become weeks. Days become hours. Cutting costs — not corners.
I’ve built real systems at scale. I know what it takes to make them work. AI isn't a shortcut. It's leverage.
"Work is going to fill a large part of your life...
Steve Jobs
and the only way to do great work is to love what you do."
If these insights resonate with you, we'll get along well.
Let's build something great together.
I've spent thirty years touching every technical surface — from small business web presence to OS release infrastructure serving a billion people.
Tech I work with
Many engineers are defined by their stack. I'm defined by what I can do with yours. AI tooling has expanded my reach exponentially and I can tackle just about anything.
My resume has a tech list, if that's your thing :)
What I do now
I help organizations integrate AI into how they work — modernizing systems, building intelligent tooling, and designing workflows that let teams focus on what matters.
In 1996 I was making cold-calls for my father’s natural gas company. We tracked them in a spreadsheet. It was fragile, error-prone, and painful to report on. I just couldn’t accept that as normal.
I carved out time to build a shared, database-driven system in Visual Basic, run over LAN — it was searchable, reliable, and usable.
I learned something valuable: frustration is often an architectural problem waiting to be solved...and I could solve it.
In 1997, I began teaching at a Computer Learning Center in Chico, California. Clients would tell me about their brittle internal systems — or no systems at all. I remember one woman sent by her boss to “learn databases” so she could track their manufacturing processes. She was terrified.
I started helping these folks. I built systems across retail, government, manufacturing, agriculture, finance, and more.
I learned that any system can be made better. And real people on the other side of the screen deserve that.
Through the early 2000s, most of my work was on internal systems for local clients. Web-based applications became more widespread and I wholeheartedly embraced them as a superior solution to LAN-based software.
In 2005 I joined a boutique web studio building customer-facing products — web sites, e-commerce, customer portals, and even a daily-deals startup during the Web 2.0 era.
The stakes were different. Usage wasn't mandatory. It wasn't a workplace requirement. I learned that adoption is earned because systems work; and make life better.
I had now spent more than a decade building internal systems and customer-facing products — learning how architecture, usability, and durability intersect.
That foundation prepared me for what came next.
In 2010, I joined Apple as a contractor to build a web-based system for auditing breaking source changes landing in daily OS builds. Six months later, I was hired full time.
It felt like stepping into the Big Leagues. I thrived.
Over the next fifteen years, my work lived behind the scenes. It wasn't shown during a Keynote presentation, but it made what was revealed possible.
CI/CD platforms, release and deployment infrastructure, operational dashboards and dev tools. Systems used daily by thousands of engineers to reliably ship software worldwide.
The scale was different. The expectations were higher. The margin for error was smaller. And the things I learned from so many brilliant and wonderful people in that environment were invaluable.
I’ve never been interested in optimizing within constraints — I’ve always been more interested in questioning if they are necessary.
That's why this moment we find ourselves in is so compelling. AI is removing barriers and providing momentum. It's not a shortcut. It's leverage.
My work now is helping organizations redesign how they work — integrating intelligence — helping them see the possibilities and define their future. Freeing them to focus on doing great things.
My Process
The first thing I do is listen. Then I ask questions — a lot of them. I need to see the whole picture before I can begin to diagnose, and diagnosis is where the real work starts. Most problems worth solving aren't what they appear to be on the surface.
Once I understand what's actually going on, I'll come back with a clear proposal: what I'd build, why, and what it gets you. Then we get to work.
How to Prepare
The one thing that makes an initial conversation most productive is a clear picture of what you're trying to solve — not the solution, just the problem. We get so used to working around broken things that we stop seeing them clearly.
So before we talk, try this: set aside how things work today and ask yourself one question: "What would this feel like if it actually worked the way it should?" Start there. Everything else follows.