About Me

Hi, my name is Richard! I'm an engineering leader and software developer based in the Jackson, MS metro area. I've been leading teams for over five years and developing software professionally for over 15 years, starting as a summer intern writing a web crawler in Java to search for and index web services. I married the love of my life Kayla in 2016 and we have two Jack Russell terriers, Captain and Piper.

Currently, I am Head of Engineering at HourWork, a B2B SaaS company that helps hourly employers, primarily in the quick-service restaurant industry, recruit and retain employees. Our biggest project there by far was a complete system rebuild, replacing the existing tech debt-ladened backend and no-code Bubble frontend with a new full stack Javascript system running an Express API and Lambdas on the backend and React on the frontend. We finished the project in nine months and released it with no major customer-facing issues.

Before that, I was as an Engineering Manager and software engineer at Kopis Mobile, a small company based in Mississippi building apps and hardware for the military and first responders. In my time there, I worked a number of projects, including adding features to a rugged video sharing and streaming platform. I also led the technical implmentation of a web platform to store, organize, and share safety and security best practices for sports and entertainment venues.

Previously, I worked on software developement at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems in the Human Factors group. My role was developing software tools to assist researchers at the Center, including a few projects in VR using Unity and the HTC Vive. I also spend a few summers working at the Naval Research Lab at Stennis Space Center, mostly doing Java development.

I received my Master's degree in Computer Science in December 2012, from Mississippi State, with a focus on Software Engineering. I did my undergraduate work in Computer Science and Software Engineering, obtaining dual Bachelor's degrees from Mississippi State in May, 2011.

In my free time, I like to tinker with home automation using Home Assistant, play video games, and travel with Kayla. I also enjoy learning new things and working on side projects, like developing web sites or Android apps.