Greenville–Spartanburg, SC
Senior Backend Engineer Technical Lead
I build secure enterprise software for law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad, which covers backend systems, search, and the integrated hardware and software those systems run on. Real people rely on all of it to do their jobs effectively, and that reality sets the standard for how carefully it has to be built.
Twelve years in, most of my work comes down to whether a system holds up once people depend on it. In practice that has meant getting a record lookup to return in seconds rather than minutes, replacing a two-day manual release with a pipeline, and rebuilding hot paths in C++ so they fit the hardware an agency already owns. More recently I have spent a good deal of that time on AI, working through where it helps inside a security-sensitive environment and where it only gets in the way.
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Work done for employers and clients. Most of this code is proprietary, so there is nothing for me to link to. What I have done instead is describe each one by the problem that prompted it and what changed once it was in place.
DataWorks Plus
The main lookup screen was a form with hundreds of fields, and finding a single record took several minutes of an officer’s time. I built a Lucene-backed search to replace all of that with one query box.
Outcome A typical record lookup went from several minutes down to seconds, and it became the search path agency users reach for first.
DataWorks Plus
Build and release was fully manual and took roughly two days. I designed and implemented an Azure DevOps CI pipeline, then automated deployment to a dedicated validation machine with post-deployment testing so installation defects surfaced before release rather than in the field.
Outcome Build-and-release time fell from about two days to under two hours. Production hotfixes dropped by approximately 40%.
DataWorks Plus
I helped lead the initiative to research and evaluate AI technologies for a security-sensitive environment, assessing open-source and LLM-based tooling against security, maintainability, and cost criteria. I then produced the approved guidelines that let engineering teams adopt it without a compliance exception.
Outcome Adopted tooling cut routine development tasks by roughly 30% and established the company’s first AI usage standards.
DataWorks Plus
High-volume operations were straining the hardware agencies run in the field, which is older and far tighter on memory than anything a developer works on day to day. I rebuilt the performance-critical modules in C and C++, going after processing time and memory footprint together rather than trading one for the other.
Outcome Processing time on high-volume operations fell by approximately 50%, with a smaller memory footprint on the same hardware.
WiseTech Global
Product managers were hand-transcribing tariff data out of PDFs to keep CargoWise current, which was both slow and easy to get wrong. I built an OCR tool that pulls the data out and parses it without anyone having to retype it.
Outcome Preparing a tariff update went from roughly a full day to under an hour.
Trinity Bible Church
Child pickup process was slow and error-prone. I built a secure, web API–driven application to track and verify child and teen check-outs.
Outcome Replaced the legacy process which eliminated manual matching errors and reduced check out time to mere minutes for ~100 children.
Shadow Ridge Baptist Church
A secure automation system that takes in new-resident information and produces the outreach materials from it end to end, including contact lists, personalized postcards, and QR codes.
Outcome A multi-day manual effort became a same-day mailing, which is what made consistent monthly outreach practical to sustain.
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Public repositories. VerseLink is one idea solved three times over: you type a Bible verse reference and it becomes the full verse text, wherever you happen to be typing. Each platform constrains that differently, so while the idea is the same in all three, the version underneath is not.
C++
Runs quietly in the background on a global hotkey, so that pressing it replaces the verse reference under your cursor with the full text, in whatever window happens to have focus.
Kotlin
The same idea delivered as a secondary keyboard, using a custom input method that expands references inline in any app on the phone.
C#
A PowerToys Run plugin that types the verse text out as though it came from the keyboard, which means it still works in applications that refuse pasted input.
C# / Windows 11
Robocopy is powerful but unforgiving, and one wrong switch can quietly delete the data you meant to protect. RoboCopyTo adds an item to the Windows 11 right-click menu that opens a single dialog where you build the copy, watch the exact command update as you go, and dry run it before anything is touched. Mirrors that would delete your source are blocked outright.
Progressive Web App
An installable PWA for daily catechism review, covering all 91 questions. It runs fully offline behind a service worker, offers both quiz and reading modes, lets you set your own pace, and exports your progress so you can carry it over to another device.
Single-file web app
A party tool for Age of Empires II that randomly assigns teams and secret traitors. All of the shared state lives in the URL hash, so there is no backend to run and nothing to host. I built it for 4v4 nights on Discord.
Dart / Flutter
A small Flutter client that polls the Planning Center API and shows the most recent check-outs for an event.
These repositories are private, so there is nothing to link to. I have listed them here for completeness.
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2022–Present
DataWorks Plus Greenville, SC
I lead the design and delivery of secure enterprise software, along with the integrated hardware and software it runs on, for agencies that include LAPD, NYPD, and Michigan State Police. Alongside that I mentor developers and support engineers, and I sit with product, sales, and support through pre-sales and delivery, which is usually where the requirements get settled.
2021–2022
Code Maze Remote
I wrote technical articles and runnable sample code on C#, .NET, and general development practice for an audience of approximately 300,000 monthly readers. Every piece went through a structured editorial workflow in GitHub and JIRA, which is where I learned how much the editing matters to whether an explanation lands.
2016–2021
DataWorks Plus Greenville, SC
I built and maintained enterprise software in C#, VB.NET, JavaScript, SQL Server, C++, and Python, shipping features that agencies nationwide used every day. I took part in the architecture discussions and code reviews, and I was on the other end of production troubleshooting whenever something broke.
2014–2016
DataWorks Plus Greenville, SC
I provided Tier-2 support for enterprise software already deployed to law enforcement agencies. These systems carry uptime targets they have to stay inside, so the work was equal parts careful diagnosis and speed. In addition, I automated system imaging and the recurring maintenance with Python and Batch scripting.
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