Hi, I'm Zach.

I’m a senior software engineer and dev lead based in Raleigh, NC. I currently am a lead on the Infrastructure UI team at IBM, where I spend most of my time making sure we’re building the right things, the right way, with a team that actually enjoys doing it.

I’ve been building software professionally for about 20 years now. What that kind of time actually buys you isn’t certainty: it’s scar tissue and pattern recognition — the ability to tell a genuinely hard problem from one that only looks hard because the system around it is broken. The why, though, hasn’t changed: I still just want to make cool shit and get paid for it. Everything else is details.

I care a lot about the craft: good architecture, clean APIs, and interfaces that don’t make people feel stupid. I care just as much about the people doing the work. I’m not a manager, but sometimes I play one on TV, and I’ve had enough former teammates tell me I was a turning point in their career that I’ve stopped brushing it off. Sometimes, the best thing I can do on any given day is make someone else better at their job, unblock something that’s been stuck, or just be the kind of person I wish I’d had in my corner earlier.

I’m not here to have all the answers. I’m here to think out loud, stay honest, and occasionally be useful to someone who stumbles across this corner of the internet.

If you want to get in touch, you know where to find me.