I'm an ML researcher who came up through engineering, who's also run the operations side: client rooms, delivery teams, seven-figure engagements. I build and study LLM systems end to end.

At micro1 I worked both sides of the house. On the research side, I built evaluation harnesses for production AI agents and ran proofs-of-concept that drove model selection on a seven-figure engagement. As a strategic project lead, I managed a team of nine across seven concurrent LLM post-training projects for frontier labs and Fortune 10 clients, owning stakeholder communication up to C-level. Before that I started out as a software engineer at Vistaprint. I hold a B.S. in Computer Science from WPI.

These days I'm building my own apps under Zarate AI — small, opinionated software I want to exist. I take on the occasional consulting engagement when the problem is interesting.