After 4 awesome years of working with 350.org, it is time for a new chapter.
Saying this feels a little surreal. When I joined 350.org , I was tasked with leading a nascent engineering team - setting up engineering systems, culture, and clearing a huge backlog of technical debt. I wanted to build systems that were modern, secure, and sustainable. What I didn't expect was how much this place would shape me as an engineer, as a leader, and as a human being. Four years later, I leave with a deeper understanding of how technology can serve a global mission and drive real change.
During my time here, I had the privilege of working with teams across continents, guiding architecture changes, improving our cloud footprint, shaping engineering culture, and solving some really tricky problems. Looking back, I'm really proud of what we built together. We modernized an entire global digital ecosystem spanning hundreds of WordPress sites, multiple campaigns, mapping tools, analytics infrastructure, and internal platforms. We shortened the lead time for idea to deployment, consolidated hosting into a unified GCP environment, brought real DevOps discipline to deployments, and introduced Infrastructure as Code, containerization, CI pipelines, Business Intelligence Analytics, and data warehousing that actually scaled. We improved security, observability, and reliability across systems used by teams in many timezones. It pushed me. It sharpened me. It humbled me. And it made me better.
One of the things I'm especially proud of is how we embraced the open source ethos. I've always believed that open source is not just a tooling choice but a philosophy. It is transparency, collaboration, and freedom from vendor lock-in. And at 350, that belief translated into real impact. We introduced self-hosted platforms like Coolify, consolidated internal tooling using open source stacks, reduced dependency on proprietary services, and cut operational costs without compromising quality. Open source allowed us to spend more energy on mission-critical work, not licenses.
We also built some very nifty pieces of engineering:
- We rebuilt our multisite WordPress architecture powering five networks and over 500 sites to allow for automated deployments and plugins/themes upgrades that survived the Automattic vs WPEngine drama — when websites around the world could not get updates.
- A URL shortener API with rich analytics that could be plugged into any of our systems.
- A modern design system documented with Storybook.
- A fully automated web archiving pipeline preserving years of historical climate activism.
- Multiple campaign tools, mapping apps, and internal services that made the work of organizers easier and more scalable. Our work powered two major Global Campaign moments in the last years.
These things weren't just "projects." They were thoughtful engineering decisions that made the ecosystem more resilient, transparent, and maintainable. They also represented a belief that nonprofit tech can be world-class.
I am especially grateful for the people. The trust, the collaboration, the feedback, the late-night Slack questions, the laughs, the difficult decisions, and the shared victories. You all made this journey a gift. Working alongside you has been one of the highlights of my career. As I step into a new phase, I carry the lessons, the friendships, and the sense of purpose that 350.org helped shape. I'm excited for what comes next, and even more excited for the chance to keep building, automating, learning, and creating impact wherever I go.
Now it's time for a pause. Over the next few weeks until the end of the year, I'll be stepping back to spend time with family, breathe a little, and reflect in writing on the last four years -- you should definitely keep an eye on my blog in the coming weeks. I want to document the architecture choices, the engineering philosophy, and some of the subtle but meaningful design patterns that shaped our systems. I think it will help me close this chapter well and start the next one with clarity.
I'm also open to both consulting and full-time opportunities. If you're building something meaningful, technically interesting, or deeply impactful, feel free to reach out. And at the start of the new year, I'll be contributing more actively to the open source projects I care about, so I'd love recommendations for orgs or repos doing great work.
Onward to the next chapter, with gratitude in my heart and a renewed sense of purpose.