About Me

I am an Associate Software Developer at Putt Quest, a mini-golf business, where my work spans firmware, hardware, infrastructure, and web. I graduated from Truman State University with a B.S. in Computer Science in May 2026.

At Putt Quest I designed LED Orchestra, an offline lighting controller where ESP32-C6 nodes render one synchronized LED strip over a Matter-over-Thread mesh. I then ported its effect engine into the production firmware and wired, soldered, and installed more than 6,400 LEDs across 18 holes. I also designed and built a motorized fish-jaw obstacle, from the mechanism and 3D-printed parts to its ESP32-C6 firmware. I assembled and provisioned the course's Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster, and I build scheduling features for the employee portal.

Before that, I founded TickerStats, an AI-powered equity research platform that compares tickers, runs DCF valuation, generates pitch decks from schema-validated LLM output, and exports to PPTX, PDF, and Excel. I also built the backend for GapWalk, a published Android app that finds free gaps in your calendar and nudges you toward short walks. Most recently I built BizAQ, an AI-assisted pipeline that searches, researches, and analyzes small businesses for sale.

Resume Highlights

  • Associate Software Developer at Putt Quest: built the course's LED lighting (6,400+ LEDs across 18 holes) and a motorized fish-jaw obstacle end to end, from hardware and installation to C++ firmware on ESP32 boards.
  • Assembled and provisioned a 3-node high-availability k3s cluster on Raspberry Pi 5s with Ansible, now running in production.
  • Founder of TickerStats, an AI-powered equity research SaaS that compares up to 100 tickers, runs DCF valuation, generates pitch decks with structured LLM outputs, and exports to PPTX/PDF/XLSX/CSV.
  • Implemented core SaaS infrastructure: Auth0 authentication, Stripe subscriptions, tier enforcement via JWT claims, and per-user usage tracking in PostgreSQL.
  • Led a TruScholar research project (EcoWatch) end to end: collected and cleaned imagery data, trained a YOLOv8 model, and shipped an inference app supporting image/video/webcam detection with downloadable results.
Full Resume

Experience

Associate Software Developer

Putt Quest (Premiere Mini Golf LLC), Fairview Heights, IL · May 2026 – Present

  • Designed and built LED Orchestra, an offline LED show controller in C++ (ESP-IDF, ESP-Matter) where ESP32-C6 nodes render one synchronized virtual strip over a Matter-over-Thread mesh, with OTA firmware updates.
  • Ported its effect engine into the production ESPHome/MQTT lighting firmware, and wired, soldered, powered, and installed 6,400+ WS2815 LEDs (700+ ft) across 18 holes on ESP32-S3 controllers.
  • Designed and built a motorized fish-jaw obstacle: a hinged jaw driven by a 12 V linear actuator, 3D-printed parts, and ESP32-C6 firmware with a Wi-Fi control page, OTA updates, fault states, and 44 unit tests.
  • Assembled and provisioned the course's 3-node high-availability k3s cluster on Raspberry Pi 5s, now running in production, using Ansible playbooks for Longhorn storage, cert-manager, ArgoCD, Cloudflare Tunnel, and Kanidm identity.
  • Built employee-portal scheduling features in SvelteKit and PostgreSQL: transactional schedule saves, per-location permissions, DST-safe shift reminders, and staff directory sync.

Founder & Full-Stack Engineer

TickerStats · 2025 – 2026

  • Founded and built an AI-powered equity research SaaS that compares up to 100 tickers, runs DCF valuation, and generates pitch decks with structured LLM outputs.
  • Implemented core SaaS infrastructure including Auth0 authentication, Stripe subscriptions, tier enforcement via JWT claims, and per-user usage tracking in PostgreSQL.
  • Delivered server-side export pipelines to PPTX/PDF/XLSX/CSV and improved performance with concurrent data fetching and in-memory TTL caching.

TruScholar Researcher (Computer Vision)

Truman State University · 2024 – 2025

  • Led EcoWatch end to end by collecting, cleaning, and analyzing imagery data for litter and illegal dumping detection in outdoor environments.
  • Trained and evaluated a YOLOv8 model and packaged inference into a Streamlit app supporting image, video, and webcam modes.
  • Shipped analyst-friendly outputs including annotated media, detection statistics, charts, and downloadable CSV results.

Vice President, Alumni Relations

Bulldog Student Investment Fund · 2024 – 2025

  • Led alumni outreach and coordinated event communications to strengthen engagement between students and alumni professionals.
  • Planned and executed messaging for fund events, including invitations, reminders, and follow-ups.
  • Maintained consistent communication channels to support long-term alumni relationships.

Education

B.S. Computer Science

Truman State University · 2022 -- 2026

Tools & Technologies

TypeScriptReactNext.jsSvelteKitNest.jsPythonFastAPIPostgreSQLRedisC++ESP32 / ESP-IDFESPHomePlatformIOMatter / ThreadMQTTAWSDockerKubernetes (k3s)AnsibleArgoCDGit

Research

  • TruScholar Researcher, EcoWatch (Computer Vision): built dataset, trained YOLOv8 model, deployed Streamlit inference app for image/video/webcam with exports.

Leadership

  • Vice President, Alumni Relations, Bulldog Student Investment Fund: led alumni outreach and managed event communications.