Even before I touched a line of code I was curious about computers.
The foundation was already being built.
At age 13, and well before the websites, there was curiosity. The foundation was already there.
I had a young, but strong passion for computers and a desire to understand how they worked. At 14 could already explain how a motherboard works. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to understand.
This is 14 year old Tyler explaining how a motherboard works if you want to see it.
Watch: Age 13 motherboard explanation
At 15, in a dimly lit room in Rosenberg, Texas, a single line of code changed everything.
The first website. The first connection. The moment passion became purpose.
The first render. The feedback loop that never got old.
George Ranch High School. Where curiosity met curriculum.
Where a 3.2 GPA didn't define potential. It was just the beginning.
High School Journey
Building the foundation of knowledge and passion
Academic Achievement
Numbers don't tell the whole story
Wharton County Junior College. Programming Fundamentals I & II.
Some paths aren't meant to be completed. They're meant to be redirected.
The degree wasn't the destination. The knowledge was.
The first building block
Building upon the foundation
2016. Houston Texas Federal Firefighters Credit Union. MIS Assistant.
My first "adult" job: the IT department of a federally regulated financial institution. Much of it, me.
Where code met infrastructure, and security was everything.
No tickets to pass along. If it plugged in, I owned it.
Patch panels, CAT5E runs, switch ports. When something in the building stopped working, it was mine to fix. Nobody to escalate to.
Windows and Linux machines that had to stay up, because a credit union does not get to have a bad day.
Federal financial regulations touched every system I maintained. Compliance was not a checkbox. It was the job.
Daily financial data processing in a secure environment, before I ever wrote production code.
Payroll deposits, mortgage payments, member money. Every day those files had to process, correctly, on time.
Member checks clearing through the core banking system I helped keep healthy, with reports on my manager's desk each morning.
This is where I learned what "production" really means.
2017–2019. Benchmark Insurance Group. Sr. React Developer / Network Administrator.
Three portals. One vision. Complete digital transformation.
This wasn't just development. It was digital architecture.
Architected in React, where employees track customer insurance quotes and service requests in one system.
Built the company's customer portal and main business website with React & Node.js.
Enterprise identity & access management with SSO across every internal tool, compliance-grade.
2019–2022. EOG Resources. Fortune 500. Software Developer.
Enterprise-level applications. Thousands of users. Mission-critical systems.
This was scale. This was impact. This was senior-level development.
Highly responsive React interfaces surfacing operational data from complex backend microservices, built for the people running the field.
Extended backend functionality in C# with scalable API development supporting high-volume operational data.
Managed DevOps systems and oversaw full-stack deployments. High-performance, stable releases at Fortune 500 standards.
July 2022 – October 2025. Vivid Seats. Software Engineer.
A ticketing marketplace with millions of users. Revenue-critical systems, monitored in real time with Datadog, OpenSearch, GTM, FullStory.
Speed without sloppiness. Calm while everything moves fast.
Led the migration of a legacy Java checkout system to a modern Next.js architecture, improving site speed and developer velocity.
Architected the end-to-end replacement of a legacy Java auth system with AWS Cognito, from security model to production deployment, to combat account-takeover attacks at scale.
Designed and implemented complex multi-variant A/B experiments via Optimizely across the checkout funnel, directly improving conversion and informing product decisions.
Mentored and onboarded junior and mid-level engineers; established TypeScript standards and enforced type-safe patterns across the frontend.
Also shipped: Apple Pay & PayPal checkout integrations · published NPM component packages with WebGL + MapLibre geospatial visualization.
April 2026 – Present. VerifyToday. Lead Software Engineer.
Leading architecture and development of an I-9 digitization and remediation platform, converting paper employment-eligibility forms into structured, audit-ready records.
Where security, compliance, and applied AI converge.
Designed AI-driven document classification & validation pipelines using Microsoft Foundry (Azure AI) to identify document types, extract Form I-9 fields, and auto-detect errors before they become audit liabilities.
Engineered secure processing of highly sensitive PII (SSNs, government IDs, immigration paperwork) with strict access controls and separation of relational vs. document data stores.
Built workflows that flag deficient records, explain each violation in plain language, and route them for correction, reducing manual review time and lowering I-9 audit exposure.
Sets technical direction, code standards, and review practices, translating federal I-9 compliance requirements into scalable, maintainable, secure services.
NestJS · Vue.js · MySQL · MongoDB
8+ years of experience. Full stack. Senior level.
Fundamentals first. AI-accelerated now.
8+
years of full-stack engineering
Millions
of users served in production
4
industries: marketplaces, energy, insurance, cybersecurity
AI
pipelines running in production today
LLM document-extraction pipelines on Microsoft Foundry. n8n agent workflows in production. RAG, prompt engineering, OpenAI / Claude / Gemini SDKs.
A Next.js checkout serving millions at Vivid Seats. A NestJS + Vue compliance platform at VerifyToday. React & Node portals since 2017.
AWS Cognito auth at scale. Azure AI services. Docker, CI/CD, Linux. Deployments owned end to end.
A production AI pipeline, built for an audience of one.
Agents find the work. LLMs score the fit and draft the pitch. A human makes the call.
The same architecture I build for employers, pointed at my own job search.
n8n workflows scan and ingest job postings into MySQL, then run LLM analysis on every one: fit scoring, bid strategy, screening-question answers.
Each job gets a drafted proposal and a Loom video script, generated on demand and reviewed by a human before anything is sent.
Submitted proposals feed a retrieval store, so every new draft learns from the ones that came before it.
A Cognito-authenticated Next.js dashboard streams new jobs live over server-sent events. Review, override, approve.
Next.js · n8n · MySQL · LLM APIs · RAG · AWS Cognito · Server-Sent Events
2017 – Present. Candy Creative Digital. CEO & Lead Product Engineer.
Running concurrent with every role: startups and small businesses, built, stabilized, upgraded.
Some problems don't need a team. They need clarity.
10–14 day stabilization sprints for SaaS operators with buggy codebases
See the offer →Custom n8n workflows streamlining business processes and data handling
Client-facing sites, customer portals, secure hosting, deployment pipelines
Took a local business to page 1 of Google and grew website traffic 632%
2018 – 2026. Candy Creative Digital. 9 projects, documented screen by screen.
A health clinic's intake and testing system. Insurance onboarding. Storefronts, agency sites, and a tool that splits audio files. Each one has a live URL and a write-up of what it actually does.
One engineer, start to finish, on every one of these.
FeaturedAI Development2026
MP3 Track Splitter
Candy Creative Digital · Houston, TX · 10 screens documented
If you've ever ripped a live set, a mixtape or a whole album into one giant MP3, you know the problem. You want it as separate songs with the right titles and cover art, and every option is either a …
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08Portfolio WebsitePortfolio WebsiteDevelopment · Design · SEOWebsite DevelopmentClickficks Software & Marketing, Houston, Tx2019Website DevelopmentClickficks Software & Marketing2019
09Benchmark InsuranceInsurance OnboardingDevelopment · Design · SEO · Content · UI/UXWebsite DevelopmentBenchmark Insurance Group of Texas, Houston, Tx2018Website DevelopmentBenchmark Insurance Group of Texas2018I'm looking for a senior or staff full-stack role where I own the architecture and ship AI features into a real product. Everything on this page is the case for that.
Schedule a discussion →Candy Creative Digital built everything above, and it's still open to founders who need it. If your SaaS product is slow or buggy, a Product Rescue Sprint is 10 to 14 days of stabilization and shipped features, scoped up front.
"Modern AI didn't replace my fundamentals. It amplified them."
I prompt-engineer AI agents (Cursor, Claude Code, n8n, LangChain) to build commercial-grade software: performant, stable, secure, optimized.
Behind the tools: 8+ years of full-stack fundamentals, mastered before the rise of modern AI.
AI writes code at my direction. I own the architecture, the security model, and the last ten percent that makes it production-grade.
For many, it's just a website.
For me, it's art.
Houston, Texas. Open to Senior/Staff Software Engineering & AI Automation roles.
8+ years of full-stack engineering across online marketplaces, oil & gas, insurance, and cybersecurity.
Currently Lead Software Engineer at VerifyToday.
Ready for the next challenge. Ready to create. Ready to build.
Not hiring, but shipping a SaaS product that needs help? Contract work runs through Candy Creative Digital: Product Rescue Sprints.
Houston, Texas
Exhibit A: this website. Next.js 15, GSAP scroll choreography, AI-generated brand footage. Designed, written, and built by me.
