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Staff Software Engineer · Design Systems · Agentic Engineering

Hey, I’m Josh. I build the quiet systems the web runs on.

Design-systems architect and accessibility advocate — 15+ years shipping platforms, from a university-scale design system to billion-dollar commerce. Today I put agents in production and build through an agentic engineering practice.

About

Tinkerer by nature, engineer by trade.

Curiosity first

It started with Legos, evolved into code, and now extends to renovating my home. Understanding how things work — and making them better — never stopped being satisfying.

Use the platform

Web standards matter. Semantic HTML, progressive enhancement, and accessibility aren't checkboxes — they're the foundation of good engineering. The browser gives us so much for free.

Empower people

The best work removes barriers and unlocks potential — design systems that let non-developers build websites, tools that make complex tasks simple.

Rescue the bulldogs

My wife and I have spent a decade adopting the "broken bulldogs" others passed over. They teach patience, unconditional love, and joy in the present moment.

StandardsDesign SystemsUXWeb ComponentsPuzzlesOpen SourceAnimal RescueTravelAINASAHome ImprovementBulldogsSoccerProblem-SolvingFootballArchitecturePhotographyWCAGLinuxPerformanceFormula 1RoboticsMentorshipDocumentation

Track Record

Fifteen years of shipping.

Sites adopting the design system in year one
100+
Reduction in partner development costs
70%+
Accessibility scores across adopter sites — up from below 40%
90%+
Commits in a production Laravel codebase built 100% with Claude
1,800+
  1. October 2021 - Present

    Staff Software Engineer

    The University of Maryland

    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Web Components
    • Node.js
  2. July 2020 - October 2021

    Staff Frontend Engineer

    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Jest
    • Lighthouse
  3. July 2019 - June 2020

    Software Engineer

    Under Armour

    • React
    • TypeScript
    • Redux
    • Apollo
  4. November 2011 - March 2019

    Full Stack Developer, UX Designer

    ALEX+TOM

    • JavaScript
    • React
    • Ruby on Rails
    • Django

Plus side ventures shipped end-to-end: CTO of Macro Meals (profitable year one, exited) and founder of Draft Slot (graduate thesis turned production platform, its Laravel codebase built 100% with Claude).

Read the full resume

Agentic Engineering

Agents in production. Agents that build.

In 2026, “I use AI” can mean two very different things: agents shipped into production, and agents that build the software itself. I work in both — and keep them distinct, because each is its own discipline.

Agentic Engineering

Agents building the software itself: Draft Slot's entire Laravel codebase written with Claude — 1,800+ commits, 347 Pest tests, and no missed draft night since the rebuild. The discipline is requirements first, validation gates, and a bar that never moves.

Agents in production

Software acting while users watch: university search grounded in a Vertex-indexed corpus spanning 200+ umd.edu sites, an ingestion agent that turns a URL into draft-grid entries, and alt-text and marketing-copy agents shipped in a platform pipeline. The discipline is grounding, sourcing, and human-in-the-loop review.

Selected Work

Recent Case Studies

A selection of projects I’ve worked on throughout my career

World Heritage USA website — Addy Silver winner, 2018
Baltimore National Heritage website — Addy Silver winner, 2018
Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) website — Addy Silver winner, 2015
Macro Meals meal-delivery platform brand image
Design System Announcement
Shenandoah National Park website — Addy Silver winner, 2018
Component combination examples
University of Maryland brand imagery from the institutional web platform
National Park Service Park Points website — Addy Gold winner, 2011
Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail website — Addy Gold winner, 2013
HMSHost website — Addy Gold winner, 2016
An Agentic Engineering Practice — how Draft Slot's codebase was rebuilt with agents

Staff Software Engineer · Agentic Engineering

An Agentic Engineering Practice

10x delivery · production code built with Claude, held to the same bar

How Draft Slot's Laravel codebase was rebuilt with an agentic engineering practice — an orchestrator dispatching subagents through a requirements, build, validation loop, with harness fluency and context discipline, from the Claude 3.7 Sonnet era forward.

Design System architecture overview

Principal Architect · Staff Software Engineer

One System, Any Stack

University of Maryland · 100+ adopting sites in year one

How SOLID principles enabled a platform-agnostic design system that works across PHP, Java, React, Vue, Angular, and static sites without forcing technology choices.

UMD Content API Visualization

Staff Software Engineer · Principal Architect

Connecting Campus Content

University of Maryland · APIs for thousands of campus sites

Building API services that let thousands of university websites share news, events, and alerts automatically.