Lead AI Engineer | LLM platforms, agents, RAG & evals | EU AI Act & GDPR in practice | Open source: Redakt, Sift, Sherpa | Inventor, USPTO patent pending
I've been writing software since 1999 and building with coding agents since July 2025. Mostly for the web: freelance sites, a financial news wire I ran as CIO, the Pasadena Public Library's website, then enterprise Angular apps at Wolters Kluwer and at Memodo, where I ended up leading the front-end team. Honestly, I was oblivious to what was happening in machine learning until ChatGPT came out. Then I could see right away how much it was going to change, and I still haven't come down from that high.
Today I'm Lead AI Engineer at Memodo, a solar wholesaler with about 300 people in five countries. I built MemodoAI, our company-wide AI platform. It runs LibreChat on Azure OpenAI in the EU, hooks into Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, and checks for personal data before anything reaches a model. Everyone got access in June 2026. Along the way I co-wrote our AI governance framework, helped train colleagues for the EU AI Act's literacy requirement, and started an AI Champions network.
Outside work I build in public:
Redakt: open-source GDPR/PII detection for AI teams (built on Microsoft Presidio)
Sift: a RAG knowledge base with its own MCP server
Currents: my self-hosted AI news pipeline, with evals, Langfuse observability and six layers of prompt-injection defense. Its output is public at downstream.news.
Sherpa: interviews you and tells you which AI tools fit your work
sdd-flow: spec-driven development with Claude Code subagents
I get AI past the demo and into people's daily work, governance and people problems included. That's usually where it stalls.
Own AI at Memodo (≈300 employees, 5 countries), from platform engineering through governance and adoption.
• Built and rolled out MemodoAI company-wide (June 2026): LibreChat on Azure OpenAI (EU), Entra SSO, Microsoft 365 via MCP, SharePoint retrieval, PII filtering with Redakt
• Wrote the AI strategy and governance framework: risk assessment, GDPR guidance, vendor checklist, tool budget model
• Helped with training employees (EU AI Act Art. 4 AI literacy) and started the AI Champions network
• Lead the AI process-optimization stream of the company-wide optimization program; shipped automations to production
Memodo GmbH
Feb 2022 - Nov 2025
Frontend development, team lead. Led a team of up to 6 Angular/TypeScript developers building Memodo's finance and internal web products.
Software Developer
Memodo GmbH
Jun 2019 - Feb 2022
Wolters Kluwer
Nov 2016 - Jun 2019
Working mainly with Angular and Front-End development.
Human Capital Management Institute
Mar 2012 - Jun 2016
Responsible for .NET back-end and JavaScript front-end applications development, website development and maintenance.
City of Pasadena
Pasadena, CA
Sep 2008 - Feb 2013
Responsible for developing and maintaining the Pasadena Public Library's digital presence and digital initiatives. Project manager for technology related projects.
New Age Capital
May 2007 - Aug 2008
Commercial and residential mortgage and business financing broker consulting clients on purchases, refinances and lines of credit. [ www.nacommercial.com ]
Emergency Disaster Systems
Jul 2006 - Oct 2006
Assisted U.S. BioDefense (OTCBB: UBDE) management with the acquisition of Emergency Disaster Systems.
Established and supervised operations, internal policies and procedures, product development, and sales.
Countrywide
Jun 2005 - Jun 2006
Assisted nationwide clients with home purchase financing and in leveraging their home equity through refinancing and home equity lines of credit.
Financial News USA
Sep 2002 - May 2005
Financial News USA is a financial public relations firm with a proprietary news wire service.
As Chief Information Officer, developed internal IT operations, technical infrastructure, business processes, and web applications. Developed and managed a proprietary news wire service, and served a dual role as the senior editor of that service.
As General Manager and Marketing Director, responsible for all marketing campaigns and efforts for Financial News USA and for our client companies, including both online and traditional marketing methods.
Also responsible for product development and management.
Managed operations personnel, supervised a team of web and software developers, assisted with the management and education of the sales team.
As Business Developer, developed and serviced numerous business relationships.
Responsible for expanding the reach of Financial News USA’s news feed.
Various
Jun 1999 - May 2005
Developed both front-end (design) and back-end (scripting and programming) solutions for various clients and companies.
• Designed, developed and maintained several websites for various clients.
• Supervised design teams as well as coordinated integration with backend components and programming.
• Responsible for the administration of the company web servers and web hosts.
Skills: 32
Technical
AngularDockerGenerative AILarge Language Models (LLM)Python (Programming Language)Software DevelopmentTypeScript
Business
Business DevelopmentChange ManagementEntrepreneurshipMarketingOnline MarketingProject ManagementStrategic PlanningStrategy
Interpersonal
Team LeadershipTechnical Leadership
Other
AI AgentsAI GovernanceAI StrategyAzure OpenAIData PrivacyGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)LangFuseLangSmith
Claude Trained an "AI" for Me
Claude trained a small open model to do the job a hosted 70B model used to do in my news pipeline, using answers I'd been storing all along. Training was the easy part. Figuring out if the result was good enough took longer, and we got it wrong twice.
I've Been a Naughty Developer, So I'm Punishing Myself
I kept slipping past my own review guards. sdd-flow now makes me stop: a design gate, delivery tiers, eval sign-offs, tracing, and reviews by a second model.
Where AI Failed on My Provisional Patent Application
Post 1 said the provisional patent was filed for $65. Here are the four places the AI work failed: the drawings, the claims, the prior-art search, and a form the patent office had to ask for.
Alleviate Your Exhaustion and Improve Your Focus When Running Agents
Running several agent sessions wears you down, and tired is when you stop reading what the agent hands back. That cost me a project. What helped was removing small frictions, not trying harder.
AI Vendors Don’t Lock You In. They Lock You Out.
Every vendor evaluation I've sat through was built to spot lock-in. None was built to spot the reverse: an AI system that leaves with the record of how your company works.
