Self-taught technical founder who ships production AI systems end to end. Three years building agentic systems on Claude — on top of a decade leading operations in high-scale, regulated environments. 21 public GitHub repositories, each taken from empty to deployed, solo.
A local-first runtime for autonomous AI workers: deterministic actions by default, an LLM invoked only when a step genuinely needs judgment. Manifest-driven (worker.yaml) with an inspectable CLI — nia inspect, nia dry-run — to evaluate a worker before it runs against real systems. Makes AI automation repeatable, auditable, and safe to deploy.
An AI earpiece companion: nRF5340 firmware (Zephyr RTOS), React Native, BLE LE Audio. Custom firmware with LC3-codec audio, 40 Claude tools wired in — real-time translation, meeting transcription, Mac control. Custom 3D-printed enclosure.
A cloud-native payments stack: event-driven API backend with structured reconciliation logic, paired with an iOS client. Built on XRP Ledger for settlement.
Full-scholarship athlete. Operated at high performance under pressure, within systems, on national stage.
Professional athlete. International deployment. Proof of range before it became a pattern.
14 direct reports. P&L ownership. Scheduling. Operational systems from the floor up.
10-acre vertically integrated cannabis cultivation. $3M+ raised. Board reporting. METRC seed-to-sale compliance. Built and ran the whole stack.
High-scale distribution. Certified trainer on the floor. Process optimization, KPIs at volume. Kept building nights and weekends.
LLM automation for SMB clients (65% reduction in manual handling). Multi-tenant SaaS for tissue-culture labs. Payments infrastructure. And Nia — an open-source local AI ops runtime. 21 public repos.
Supervising warehouse operations for a Fortune 500 logistics company — people, safety, throughput. Still building after hours.
I'm targeting Forward Deployed Engineer and AI Engineer roles at companies building real AI products. If you're building something serious and need someone who ships — reach out directly.
yorksims@gmail.com