Hi, I’m Jake. I split my time between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, with frequent trips to the East Coast and wherever curiosity takes me next.
I’m married to Julia Murzy, my partner in crime and an inspiring engineering leader at Netflix. We push each other a lot, in the best way.
I’ve spent nearly 17 years building things at the intersection of code, design and product. Founder life shaped most of that. I’ve learned the most from experiments that broke, bent, or surprised me. I like problems that fight back, and I’m happiest when I can turn ambiguity into something real.
Empowering teams and asking good questions are among the highest leverage uses of my time, but I still want to stay close to the craft. As AI takes on more of the typing, the work shifts toward framing the right problems, making good calls, and recognizing what is worth building. That makes proximity to the work more important, not less.
That’s why I still code. A lot. I just let LLMs do most of the typing. They’re tireless, fast, and blissfully unaware of their own bad ideas. Yet.
JavaScript used to be my favorite compile target. But AI has changed how I think about programming languages: English is increasingly the source language, and the LLM is the compiler. Anyone with a solid foundation in how systems work can now start in a new language and get productive immediately. I can now move from writing production-grade fine-tuning data pipelines in Python to building an entire retro arcade game in GDScript to writing C++ ExecuTorch bindings for React Native that run custom voice models on-device in a TypeScript app, all in a single week.
AI makes it much easier to turn an idea into something real. If you’re a good engineer with a foundational understanding of the craft, good judgment, and taste, those qualities will increasingly set you apart. The limiting factor is increasingly your imagination.
My advice to anyone entering the industry: get really good at one language and its entire ecosystem. The ecosystem is the important part. Many core concepts carry across languages, and knowing one ecosystem deeply helps you transfer that understanding without outsourcing your judgment to LLMs.
This isn’t nostalgia for hand-writing code. Learning assembly teaches you how a machine works; learning an ecosystem teaches you how software is actually built, operated, and evolved. You don’t need to implement every layer yourself, but you do need enough understanding to judge what gets built, where it will fail, and when it is good enough to ship, regardless of who types the code.
Beyond that, I don’t have straight answers about what this shift means for the industry or for new engineers. The expectations are changing fast, and fundamentals matter more, not less. Still, it’s an unusually exciting time to be a software engineer.
I briefly dipped my toes into open source and wrote occasionally[1][2], mostly about UI architecture, interaction design, and the sharp edges you only find by shipping. Founder life got in the way, and I haven’t made as much time for either since.
My writing sometimes sounds academic because I like holding multiple opposing ideas in my head at once. That tension is usually the point. I’m not trying to sound clever. I’m trying to get to something solid. Exploring competing perspectives is how I pressure test ideas before committing to one. That habit has turned out to be unexpectedly useful for context engineering with LLMs. Better results often come from holding competing constraints in view long enough to give the model a clearer problem.
Most of my current energy goes into researching human-centered AI and turning those ideas into real, testable products. I’m using FlightDouble to put ideas into practice, building and testing cockpit workflows that explore how multimodal models, new interfaces, and LLMs can make a real difference for pilots in high-pressure situations. My focus is on rapid experimentation, strong UX, and translating cutting-edge AI into intuitive, human-friendly tools.
I’m also looking for a co-founder who cares deeply about craft, judgment, and building things the right way. If someone comes to mind, I’d love an intro.
I care a lot about taste. Great products are built through a series of small, compounding decisions. I’m drawn to teams that aim high, sweat details, and aren’t afraid to challenge conventions when it serves a real goal.
I’ve led products from rough sketches to enterprise scale, and I’m especially energized when design, engineering, and product thinking are truly integrated.
I’m not a designer by title, but I’m obsessive about design quality. I’ve built and maintained design systems, UI component libraries, and interaction patterns across web and mobile. I pay attention to how things feel, not just how they look. Motion, affordances, and tiny interaction details matter.
I shamelessly borrow from designers who share their thinking publicly, and I try to pass that generosity forward.
Mentorship has been a constant through my career.
I’ve helped engineers grow from IC to senior to leadership roles, and coached career transitions from non-technical backgrounds into senior engineering and management positions. I tend to highlight what seems obvious to me, without assuming others see it too, because that's often where the biggest leverage is for someone learning.
I’m always looking for new mentors too. Learning compounds fastest when you stay uncomfortable.
I occasionally invest small checks in early stage startups, usually pre-seed or seed. I’m most interested in teams with strong taste, clear judgment, and the potential to define a category. I expect to do one to three of these a year.
Julia and I are slowly working toward a long term goal of seeing the whole world together. We’ve visited 50+ countries so far. Koh Yao Yai is our current favorite escape. Quiet, off the grid, and a good reminder to zoom out and recalibrate before jumping back in.
When I’m not working, I’m usually outside. Winter is my season. Snowboarding has been my reset button for years, and I recently picked up skiing too. Summers pull me toward the ocean, and surfing has become the perfect counterbalance. Moving through nature clears my head better than anything else.
At the end of the day, I care about the work, the people I do it with, and the impact of what we build.
I thrive on craft, clear judgment, and constant learning. The best problems challenge your taste and make the work feel worth it.
If any of that resonates, we’ll probably get along.
Fin.