// about
Who I am
The non-resume version — background, how I think about engineering, what I actually use, and what I care about beyond work.
Background
The engineer
I'm a Cloud Data Engineer focused on Google Cloud Platform — building and operating the pipelines, infrastructure, and data systems that organizations depend on to make decisions. My day-to-day involves BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer, and the rest of the GCP data stack.
I got into data engineering because I like the intersection of systems thinking and real-world impact. Pipelines are boring until they break, at which point they're the most important thing anyone cares about — I find that constraint clarifying. Building something reliable is harder and more satisfying than building something impressive.
I care about correctness over cleverness, observable systems over opaque ones, and documentation that actually helps the next person instead of covering the author's tracks. I've worked on pipelines that process millions of events a day, and I've debugged ones that processed twelve. Both taught me something.
This site is personal and not affiliated with my employer. Everything here reflects my own views and work.
Values
How I think about things
Privacy by default. I use tools that respect it. I build things that don't require it to be sacrificed. This site has no analytics, no trackers, and no cookies — not because I couldn't add them, but because I don't want them.
Open knowledge. I built The Prompt Kitchen because I kept seeing people struggle with AI tools in ways that had obvious solutions — solutions nobody had written down clearly. Good information should be findable, not gatekept behind paywalls or buried in YouTube comments.
Practical over hype. I've watched a lot of technology arrive with enormous fanfare and leave having solved a much smaller problem than advertised. I try to stay curious without getting swept up. The question I always come back to: does this actually help someone do something?
Specificity. Vague is easy. Specific is hard and usually more useful. In writing, in engineering, in explaining something to someone who doesn't know what you know yet.
The Prompt Kitchen
Why I built it
The Prompt Kitchen is a free knowledge base about using AI practically — for everyday people, not just developers. It lives at thepromptkitchen.fyi.
I built it because the AI conversation has two speeds: "this will change everything" and "I tried it once and it didn't work." Neither is helpful. The people I wanted to reach are somewhere in the middle — they know these tools exist, they sense there's something useful there, and they just need someone to show them concretely how to get value out of them without a PhD in machine learning or a six-week course.
It makes sense given who I am: someone who thinks about data systems, has to communicate complex ideas clearly, and believes useful knowledge should be accessible. It's not a random side project — it's a logical extension of what I already care about.
Beyond work
Other things
// placeholder sections — fill in what feels right
[ Interest ]
Add something real here — a hobby, something you read, something you do outside of screens. Specificity makes this memorable.
[ Interest ]
Another genuine interest. The goal is for someone reading this to feel like they're getting a real sense of who you are, not a LinkedIn summary.
Setup
What I use
Tools and services I actually rely on — not a sponsor list, just what works for me.
Cloud & Data
Google Cloud Platform
My primary cloud — BigQuery, Dataflow, Composer, Pub/Sub, GCS and more.
BigQuery
Serverless data warehouse. Fast, scalable, and surprisingly good at cost control when you're careful.
dbt
SQL-based transformations with version control and testing built in. Hard to go back once you've used it.
Privacy & Productivity
Proton Mail
End-to-end encrypted email. Privacy isn't an add-on, it's the product.
Proton Drive
Encrypted cloud storage. Less convenient than Google Drive, worth it.
Standard Notes
Encrypted, open-source notes. Plain text, synced everywhere, outlasts any trend.
Development
VS Code
Still the most practical editor for the range of things I work on day to day.
Python
Primary language for data work, scripting, and pipeline logic. Readable by default.
Git / GitHub
Version control for everything, not just code. Configuration, docs, side projects.
[ Add your setup ]
Hardware, terminal setup, shell, other tools worth mentioning — fill this in.