Jake L.

I spent 4 years at SpaceX as a founding member of the Raptor engine software team - the kind of environment where code has to work the first time, under real constraints, with no room for hand-waving. I've carried that same engineering discipline into building complete web products from idea to launch, and I treat your project like it's my own, not a ticket to close. Most recently I designed, built, and shipped Artelo and Riot IQ, both from a blank repo to production, and I currently serve as CTO running both. Most recently, I built and launched Artelo and Riot IQ from scratch, and I currently serve as CTO for both. What that means for you: I take full ownership end-to-end - architecture, frontend, backend, infrastructure, and the unglamorous last 10% that most freelancers leave unfinished. You won't get a half-built MVP and a goodbye. I see the project through to completion and hand it over when it's truly complete. 🛠 A few things I've shipped and lead: - SpaceX (4 years) - served as a founding member of the software team for the Raptor engine, building mission-critical systems where reliability wasn't optional. - Artelo & Riot IQ - both built solo from scratch; full-stack apps now running in production with hundreds of thousands of real users, where I own the entire stack and roadmap as CTO. - Data-heavy integrations - pipelines and custom reporting across e-commerce marketplace APIs (Amazon SP-API & Ads, Shopify, Etsy, Walmart), plus Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, and SendGrid. - Scaled infrastructure - built CI/CD and cloud architecture (AWS, GCP, Terraform, Docker/Kubernetes) supporting hundreds of thousands of users. ⚡️ How I work - AI-accelerated, not AI-dependent: I pair 10+ years of real engineering discipline with modern AI tooling (Cursor, Codex, Claude) to move 10x faster - faster prototyping, cleaner code, better docs - without the over-engineering or technical debt that slows projects down later. You get senior-level architecture at startup speed. 💻 Stack: React, Next.js, Node.js, TypeScript, Python, C++. SQL/Postgres, AWS Aurora, Firebase/Firestore, NoSQL. Serverless, AWS, Google Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD. 🎓 Background: BS in Computer Science from USC (graduate coursework in databases, ML, and AI), and 4 years at SpaceX founding the software team for the Raptor engine. I've since built and led products from pre-seed MVPs to 8-figure brands. 📩 If you have an idea - or a stalled project that needs someone to actually finish it - message me. Tell me what you're building and I'll tell you exactly how I'd take it to launch.