Waving hand

Hey, I’m Jeff

...and this is my resume!

I'm currently working at Clerk as engineering director. I have held a wide variety of positions throughout my career with a heavy focus on developer tooling. I am passionate about building tools with top tier developer experience and polish, and running healthy and productive teams. I feel that my unique value prop is that...

I provide experienced engineering leadership, take ownership over products, and can play multiple roles depending on where the most impact can be made. And I do this in a way that is honest, direct, pragmatic, kind, and empathetic 💖

When I work for a company, I care about it like it’s my own. I have been involved in engineering, product management, sales, customer success, and people ops. Wherever I go, I bring with me a pragmatic, collaborative, and positive attitude aimed at making sure people are happy and the company is successful.

There's a lot of content here, feel free to skip to a specific section!

Let’s start by looking at some of my work history and past accomplishments to back this up!

Career History

After graduating from Hamilton College, where I studied neuroscience and ran a small freelance web & graphic design business on the side, I was fortunate to land an internship at a small web agency in New York City, Carrot Creative, where I began my career and grew into a tech lead and prolific open source author.

I had been saving money for years to take a year off to travel and finally got there in 2015. I took a sabbatical from Carrot to go through this formative experience with my wife.

As Carrot dissolved internally several years after the VICE acquisition, I got a great offer to go work for HashiCorp, a client who I had pitched, won, and led a rebuild of their corporate site. I was later joined by several other coworkers from Carrot.

After 4 years and a successful IPO, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse from Vercel to be the engineering manager for the Next.js team. I had contributed to and utilized Next.js heavily during my time at HashiCorp to architect and scale 10+ websites and applications. I greatly admired the product and had a lot of strong relationships already with Vercel employees.

References

I feel extremely lucky to have worked with some of the kindest and most talented folks in the industry. Click any of the names below to see how they felt about working with me!

Entrepreneurship

I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset, and throughout my life have created a number of small businesses. These experiences have taught me how to quickly learn new skills, manage people, and take ownership over all aspects of an organization.

It started in elemetary school, when I for some reason decided to pass out a flyer for a "business" in which I'd take care of peoples' houses and pets while they were on vacation over the summer. This ended up working out pretty well and lasted for several years after that, each year with a new flyer being passed out around the neighborhood.

Throughout high school and college, I ran a couple of charity-focused organizations and through these put on several large events like speakers, concerts, etc. to raise money.

After my first college internship ended up early after running out of work, I decided to use the free time to try to learn how to DJ professionally. This ended up working out and I continued to DJ through the end of college.

I started learning graphic design in middle school, and continued to utilize it and eventually pivot into freelance work, which eventually transitioned into web development, which is what kickstarted my career.

After moving to Philadelphia in 2017, I started to develop an interest in wood and metalworking, and fortunately found a makerspace within walking distance of our home. I spent hours taking classes and poring over youtube maker videos, and started designing, building, and selling furntiture in my free time.

After moving to Serenbe in 2021, I found myself without space for fabrication and therefore some extra hobby time, and a desperate need for the delicious new york style bagels I had become accustomed to for breakfast each morning. This eventually led to the creation of a small commercial bagel business.

My Values

As an individual and as a member of a team, my values are extremely important to me. Understanding my values is understanding me and how I operate, and I believe that any company that shares these values will be a place where I will thrive and make a positive impact.

Let's Work Together

I'm currently employed full time, and am only open to part time contracts or advising. I'm comfortable in a wide range of roles from VP Engineering through all levels of engineering management, full stack engineering, and product management, even marketing. I am typically most valuable in upper management roles with high ownership and flexibility.

I often advise venture capital firms on technology investments and do individual career mentorship as well, feel free to reach out if you have an interest in contracting me for this type of engagement.

The easiest way to get in touch is to send me an email at:

Credits

Both the interactive header and lava lamp blob graphics this page were very directly inspired by the work of other talented developers and lightly modified to fit this page. I am so grateful that these talented folks are willing to share their work as open source.