Here’s the thing people get wrong about me right now: they see a Director of Engineering going back to writing code and assume it’s a step backward. It’s not. It’s a bet.

The shift #

AI didn’t just add a new feature to software development. It changed the fundamental economics of building. The distance between “I have an idea” and “here’s a working proof” collapsed. What used to take a team three weeks can now be explored by one person with good judgment in three days.

That changes everything about where leverage lives.

For the past decade, leverage in tech meant managing scope — larger teams, bigger roadmaps, more coordination. The people closest to the work had the least organizational power. The people with the most organizational power were the furthest from the work.

That equation flipped. When building is cheap and fast, the bottleneck moves upstream: taste, judgment, and the ability to see connective tissue between opportunities. Those aren’t things you develop by managing from a distance. They’re things you develop by staying close to the material.

Why this is strategic, not nostalgic #

I’m not retreating to code because I miss it (though I do). I’m going back because the highest-leverage work I can do right now requires being close to the build loop.

When I can go from insight to prototype in a day, the value of having 15 years of product instinct and technical judgment isn’t diminished — it’s multiplied. Every idea I’ve ever shelved because “we don’t have the resources” is now testable. Every pattern I’ve recognized across companies and platform shifts can be validated fast.

This is what I mean by compounding opportunities: the combination of deep experience, systems thinking, and AI-native workflows creates leverage that didn’t exist two years ago.

What I’m looking for #

I want to work in an environment where:

• Small teams with high ownership are the default, not the exception
• Building and shipping are valued over managing and reporting
• Product instinct matters as much as process
• Speed is real — not “move fast” as a slogan, but actually fast
• AI is infrastructure, not a feature checkbox
• Ambiguity is the norm, and that’s considered a good thing

I’m at my best in the gap between “we know this matters” and “we know exactly what to build.” That’s where founder judgment, technical depth, and product taste converge. And with AI compressing the build cycle, that convergence point is more powerful than ever.

What I bring #

Not just code. Not just strategy. The connective tissue:

• I see wedges — the small, specific entry points that unlock larger opportunities
• I think in systems — how does this decision compound? What does it enable next?
• I can tell the story — to customers, to teams, to execs, to investors
• I’ve been through platform shifts before — I know what the early innings look like
• I can operate in ambiguity — not just tolerate it, but thrive in it

The job title I’m looking for might be Staff Engineer, Product Engineer, Founding Engineer, or something that doesn’t have a clean label yet. The title matters less than the work.

I write about this more at Dabble or Die, where you can see the building happen in real-time.