Hi, I'm Derek
I embed with people,
learn how they actually work,
and deploy systems.
I embed with people,
learn how they actually work,
and deploy systems.
I'm a franchise owner and software engineer at HelloSugar, a brand with 270+ locations across the US. I've owned two businesses. I know what keeps owners up at night and I know how to walk into any operation, build trust with the people running it, and figure out what's actually broken.
I'm technical enough to build full production systems, but my real value is knowing what to build and what not to build. I can scope a project, evaluate whether a solution fits the problem, and anticipate where complexity will surface before it becomes expensive. That comes from being the operator and the engineer at the same time. Everything I build starts the same way. I sit with the person doing the work and figure out what they actually need.
That's how I replaced a $30K/year CRM. Two weeks embedded with the sales team before I wrote any code. Separately, I built the internal portal that 270+ franchise locations use every day for support, training, and operations. I also built an AI system that audits every closed support ticket to find out whether the response actually helped. Different projects, same process. Go deep before you build anything.
“The most effective unit now is a single engineer with strong product taste. One person who deeply understands user needs and can ship fast beats an entire traditional PM + engineering team stuck in sync meetings and alignment theater.”
Two weeks embedded with the sales team before writing any code. Every feature maps to a documented workflow, not a feature list.
The portal every franchise owner, corporate team member, and support staff uses daily.
Scrapes four competitor brands monthly and surfaces where to expand next.
Analyzed 1.6M rows of usage data to help leadership decide what to keep and what to cut.
Break down the inputs and outputs. Walk through test cases by hand. Consider multiple approaches, reject the ones that don't scale. Trace the algorithm manually before writing a single line.
HelloSugar
Bought into the franchise. Identified what needed to improve in my own location, built the tools myself, then connected with leadership and earned my way into building products for the entire 270+ location network. Grew the franchise from zero to top five in the network while building the corporate tools as sole developer. The relationships came first. The code followed.
Verizon
People Analytics and Insights team. Analyzed 1.6M rows of application usage data across 196 enterprise apps and built a four-tier recommendation dashboard for HR leadership. Collaborated across GTS, HR, and Finance.
Self-directed
Committed to Launch School's mastery-based curriculum. Worked through engineering fundamentals from the ground up: languages, data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving methodology.
Aperture Media Group
Built a commercial photography business from zero. Scaled from Airbnb shoots to architectural photography for high-rises. Earned my FAA Part 107 and operated commercial drones for aerial photography. Started building HTML/CSS websites for clients and realized I liked the code more than the camera.
Grifols, Wylie FD
Paramedic school and clinical rotations across the ER, ICU, and labor and delivery. Ride-alongs with Wylie Fire responding to live 911 calls. Every day I was working alongside physicians, nurses, and fire crews who had decades more experience than me.
