About

I've run the kind of small business I build software for.

I started Deep Roots Milling, a stone-ground grain mill, in 2018. For the first couple of years I did everything: production, sales, and the books. In 2020 we moved into a bigger facility and I brought on two partners. These days I handle sales and the admin side, and I built the wholesale site our bakery, restaurant, and retail customers order through. I was also a founding member of the Common Grain Alliance, a Mid-Atlantic network of grain growers, millers, bakers, and brewers, and sat on its board from 2020 to 2022.

I've been at NCX since 2015, back when it was a small forestry startup called SilviaTerra. I watched it grow into a venture-funded climate tech company and shrink back down to a small team, and I had a different job at most stages: inventory analyst, product manager, program manager, and for the last four years senior engineer. Through all of it I've been one of the people answering support, which is a good way to find out what you actually shipped. I like owning a product all the way through, from the first conversation with a user to the bug report after launch.

How I work

  • Before I write software for an operation, I try to do the job for a while. At the mill I took orders, chased invoices, and kept the books for years before I built anything, and the platform is better for it.
  • Ten years of support calls have taught me to build for the person who is in a hurry, or confused, or standing in the woods with no signal. If something I built breaks, I want to be the one who hears about it.
  • I'd rather get a small version in front of real users and watch what they do than spend months guessing. The land legacy tool at NCX went live early and had its opening rewritten once we could see where people were dropping off.

Selected work

Deep Roots Milling · independent Dec 2025 – Aug 2026 · 287 pull requests

Wholesale ordering platform

Where our wholesale customers, from retailers to bakeries to restaurants, set up an account, order, pay, and get their invoices. It's also our CRM.

  • Customer accounts, product catalog, ordering, sample requests, and mill-session scheduling
  • Stripe payments, automated invoice reminders, and purchase-order details on invoices
  • CRM with a review queue and inbound email capture; transactional email and newsletters
  • Customers text in their market dates, and the system turns them into a newsletter for our audience
  • Django
  • DRF
  • Postgres
  • React
  • Astro
  • Stripe
  • Resend
  • Netlify
  • DigitalOcean
wholesale.deeprootsmilling.com
NCX Sep 2025 – Mar 2026

Timber marketplace

Landowners list standing timber, vetted buyers submit sealed bids, and the sale is awarded and paid for on the platform.

  • Three roles (landowner, consulting forester, buyer), each with its own onboarding, permissions, and dashboard
  • Multi-step listing flow with documents, in-browser map annotation, and spatial file upload and export
  • Sealed-bid mechanics, award flow, and transactional email
  • Django
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • PostGIS
  • Mapbox GL
NCX Oct – Dec 2025

ACH payments under compliance review

Bank-transfer payments for the marketplace. Moving other people's money meant a compliance review, so much of this was verification, disclosures, and account rules rather than the transfers themselves.

  • Bank linking, micro-deposit verification, ACH transfers, retries, and webhook reconciliation
  • Split payments across multiple recipients plus facilitator-fee collection
  • Business verification, beneficial-ownership certification, and Reg E disclosures
  • Plaid
  • Dwolla
  • Django
  • React
Independent Jun 2026 – present

Plot Hound

Timber cruise software I'm building on my own. Crews collect plot data in the woods with no signal, and it syncs to the office when they're back in range.

  • Three apps: API, web platform, and an offline-first field app for phones
  • Two-way offline sync with cached map tiles, so crews keep working without signal
  • Multi-tenant organizations with subscription tiers
  • Django
  • GeoDjango
  • React
  • PWA
  • Capacitor
  • IndexedDB
app.plot-hound.com
NCX Feb – Aug 2026

AI advisor and land legacy tools

Two landowner tools: an AI advisor that answers questions from the landowner's own property data and hands off to a human forester when it should, and a guided interview that becomes a letter to the landowner's heirs.

  • Multi-agent system with specialist handoff and an escalate-to-a-human-forester path
  • Photo and document intake, interactive property maps, streaming responses
  • Took the legacy product from an empty repo to live, then reworked the opening based on completion data
  • Anthropic API
  • MCP
  • LangFuse
  • React

Also shipped at NCX: a self-serve aerial imagery product with Stripe Checkout (built in about four weeks), a direct-mail acquisition system, Google and Facebook sign-in, and the wind-down of a legacy billing pipeline.

Experience

  1. 2022 – now
    Senior Software EngineerNCX

    Full-stack work on the marketplace, payments, the AI advisor, and landowner tools.

  2. 2020 – 2022
    National Forest Inventory Program ManagerNCX

    Managed the nationwide field inventory program.

  3. 2020 – 2022
    Founding Member and Board MemberCommon Grain Alliance

    Helped found and then served on the board of a Mid-Atlantic network connecting growers, millers, bakers, brewers, and distillers.

  4. 2018 – now
    Founder and Co-ownerDeep Roots Milling

    Founded the mill and ran all operations; moved to a larger facility with two partners in 2020. Now focused on sales, admin, and bookkeeping.

  5. 2016 – 2020
    Product ManagerNCX

    Product manager while the company grew from a small startup into a venture-funded one.

  6. 2015 – 2016
    Forest Inventory AnalystNCX (formerly SilviaTerra)

    Joined as an early hire.

  7. 2015 – now
    Customer SupportNCX, across every role

    Answering support for landowners, foresters, and buyers, in every role I've had there.

  8. Ongoing
    Consulting ForesterOverstory Forestry

    Management plans, timber sales, and inventory work for private landowners.

Education

  1. 2010
    MS, ForestryVirginia Tech
  2. 2007
    BS, ForestryVirginia Tech