Engineering with Product Vision
I view the interface as a living extension of the architecture, not just a container for it. My approach is defined by the intersection of technical precision and strategic design.
Informed by two decades as a visual artist across abstraction, design, and representational art, I treat software as a craft where aesthetics and performance are inseparable. As a Full-Stack Engineer and Technical Product Manager, I don't just build features; I architect experiences that balance complex backend logic with intuitive frontend strategy. To me, good design is a functional requirement—it is the bridge that invites a user to explore, stay curious, and engage with a system.
How I Got Here
My path to software was paved through disciplines that rely on structure, perception, and rigorous practice:
- Artist & Draftsman: I've spent most of my life as a visual artist. Drawing and painting, then moved into digital art, motion graphics, and light VFX work. My background informs my development process. I approach engineering the same way I approach a canvas: I start with a rough sketch to organize the chaos, follow an impression, and refine until the composition and tone work, in this case, until the system works.
- Linguist: I worked as a Spanish interpreter from 2005 to 2024. It taught me to think about communication and clarity. In my UI work, I lean toward icons and visual cues over text-heavy interfaces. I use symbols to bypass language barriers, using words only where they provide the most critical clarity.
- Martial Artist: I've practiced Okinawan Goju Ryu for the better part of my life, long enough that I inevitably ended up teaching. The discipline and structure required to excel in traditional training directly influenced my engineering workflow and my workflow in general. I model software the way I model traditional training—through structure, progression, and continuous growth and refinement.
Recent Work
Most of my projects combine 3D graphics, interactive UI, and full-stack development. Here are a few highlights:
La Dolce Vita
A luxury vacation rental platform built for a real client. The centerpiece is an AI concierge chatbot powered by GPT-4o and grounded in live property data via Google Sheets API — capable of answering multilingual guest questions dynamically. I built a natural language date parser and an iCal availability checker that syncs directly with the client's Airbnb calendar, so the bot always knows what's booked. React frontend on Vercel, Express backend on Render, full CI/CD pipeline.
Stack: React • Express • OpenAI • MongoDBPneuma
An experimental AI personality architecture for LLMs — a multi-layer cognitive system that shapes how the model thinks before it speaks. 46 philosophical archetypes selected via 3-layer routing (cosine similarity → momentum weighting → fusion history) and forced into dialectical collision across 1,764 pre-mapped tension pairs. Personality evolves across sessions through archetype momentum decay — weights shift over time, producing an emergent default voice that isn't hard-coded. 3-layer memory system: vector embeddings for semantic recall, structured cross-session memory, and full conversation persistence. Between sessions, archetypes run private dialectic dialogues that write silently to system state. On self-inquiry, Pneuma loads a live snapshot of its own architecture and can navigate its source files mid-conversation.
Collision Engine: 1,764 archetype tension pairsNexus Geom Lab
A gamified 4D geometry exploration platform. Users manipulate 24 hyperdimensional shapes—tesseracts, quantum manifolds, Hessian polychorons—and save configurations they find appealing. Each save unlocks animated 3D characters (Icarus-X, Vectra, Nexus-Prime) that I modeled and rigged, creating a feedback loop that rewards curiosity. Full-stack with React Three Fiber, MongoDB, JWT auth, and audio-reactive visuals driven by real-time FFT analysis.
The Architecture
The Execution
INSTVNCE Blog
A self-hosted developer blog built to feel like the work. Every
post is an instance — deployed, active, terminable. The interface
is a neopunk terminal: CRT scanlines, holographic chamfered cards,
and floating 3D metallic { } braces rendered in WebGL
via Three.js. Full Markdown support with syntax-highlighted code
blocks. The language is intentional — you AIM to publish,
you TERMINATE to delete. Most dev blogs look like Medium.
This one looks like a monitoring dashboard.
Dojo — Requirements Engine
A full-stack app modeling traditional Goju-Ryu martial arts curriculum—tracking kata, bunkai, and kumite progression. Built with React and Django, featuring soft-delete recovery and form validation to maintain data integrity across training records.
The Architecture
The Execution
NUMENEON — Full-Stack Engineer & UI Lead (Capstone)
A neopunk social media platform built with a 4-person team. I served as Technical Product Manager and UI Lead — defining the product roadmap, writing pseudocode specs, sizing tasks across XL/L/M/S tiers, and directing the SCSS design system. The main feature is a 3-column "River Timeline" designed to solve digital congestion by displaying content in parallel currents, keeping the feed from feeling overwhelming.
The Architecture
The Execution
Development Velocity
Over the past year, I've built around 43 projects. Most began as experiments or assignments, but I used them as a way to put into practice what I had just understood while it was fresh. Some became full apps; others spawned new projects as byproducts. I focus on taking the basic bounds of a task and discovering how to push the creative limits of the architecture. It's about turning chaos into something that works.