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Hi, I'm JT - senior software engineer and cloud developer based in Montreal. Over the past eight years I've built production systems across the stack: real-time audio platforms, machine monitoring hardware, big data pipelines, and developer tooling - often from initial architecture to shipped product.

I care about clear communication as much as clean architecture. The most interesting problems in tech are rarely purely technical ones.

When I'm not developing software or tinkering with my websites, I'm probably at pub trivia, hiking up Mount Royal, or playing D&D with friends.

How I Got Here

Well I didn't plan it.

I started university as a mechanical engineering student, switched to physics, then switched again to philosophy - each time following the thing that actually held my attention rather than the one that made the most career sense. I graduated from Old Dominion University with a thesis on Platonic dialogues and no clear plan.

So naturally I drove across America with my best friend, my mom's minivan, and a shoestring budget. I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to figure something out and can't afford to just stare at a wall. At the end of it, I had a flight to Beijing and a TEFL certification.

Teaching English in Beijing was equal parts rewarding and chaotic. I spent some of the best years of my life spinning around a rotating cast of schools and students, the city's particular energy, and a community of expats and locals finding their footing together. That's where I started learning to code, and realized I wasn't too bad at building websites.

I didn't do it alone, though. My mentor and best friend Emmanuel had what seemed to be supernatural patience for helping me learn. My first real jobs came through WeChat groupchats, the everything marketplace of China. I taught myself enough to keep getting hired.

That led to joining the founding team at Akkadu, which eventually led to becoming a tech founder in my own right. Then COVID arrived and scattered the community I'd built around me across several continents.

I came to Montreal to be close to the people I loved, including my incredible wife who I met in Beijing. It turned out to be a good place to land.

What I've Built

Akkadu — A real-time remote simultaneous interpretation platform that lets multilingual audiences tune in to live interpretation streams during events. I worked with a team of developers to design the full-stack application, build the audio streaming infrastructure, and architect the cloud-based scaling on AWS using Node.js, Vue.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Elastic Beanstalk.

Atlas AI — Machine monitoring hardware and software for the construction and drilling industries. I developed data science pipelines in Python processing millions of sensor data points and built a Grafana-based monitoring dashboard using Redis Time Series and PostgreSQL on AWS.

Dropbox Paper CMS — An open-source Node.js module that generates static site content from a Dropbox Paper backend, letting non-technical collaborators update a site without touching code.

Rules as Written — A static site I built for our D&D podcast, featuring audio players, lazy-loaded YouTube transcripts, and offline PWA support. Some projects exist because the work matters; others exist because your friends deserve a good website for their podcast.

Writing

The People In The Room: A Manifesto for AI Governance — A call to action for engineers, designers, and product people building AI systems. What it means to be in the room when something consequential gets built, and to take that seriously.

How I Work

I'm motivated by challenging work and care deeply about having a positive impact on the people around me. I get excited about new technologies and frameworks, but I'm more interested in mastering a few things well than collecting buzzwords.

I believe companies of all sizes have a responsibility to promote positive change in their industries, and that responsibility belongs not just to leadership, but to the people doing the building.

What I'm Confident In

  • JS/TS
  • Golang
  • Node.js
  • Vue.js
  • UX/UI
  • AWS Services
  • Docker
  • TCP/IP
  • Websockets

What I'm Excited About Learning in 2026

  • GCP BigQuery
  • Golang advanced patterns
  • French