Jason Baddley logojb@baddley ~ $

$ whoami

Jason Baddley

Founding Engineer

Nobody hands me a spec. I write my own and get to work.

Lehi, Utah, United States

Founder and full-stack engineer with 10+ years turning vague ideas into shipped products, usually as the one deciding what to build in the first place. My roots are in business intelligence and data visualization. These days it's AI: building agents, tool use, and LLM-driven features end to end. I take a fuzzy problem, make it real, and iterate with users until it beats what they imagined.

View my workGet in touch

// summary

I do my best work before there's a spec, when someone still has to decide what's worth building. For over a decade I've built data-heavy products: custom d3 dashboards and BI tools early on, full-stack React/TypeScript/Node/Postgres applications since, and lately AI-native features like chat agents with tool use, LLM output governance, and the pipelines that make them trustworthy.

What actually drives me is invention. When I couldn't find a good way to run a data-driven beta-reader program for my upcoming book, I built one (heyjustwrite.com). When I wanted to investigate our databases by asking questions in plain language, I built an AI tool to compose and test the queries. I don't do my best work against PRDs and line-level requirements — I do it by taking an abstract idea, making it real, and refining it shoulder-to-shoulder with the people who'll use it. I've done the same thing with my own money on the line, too. Real Growth Media is my own company, and there I'm the one deciding what gets built.

My favorite moment is demo day — not just showing what we built, but watching users see what's suddenly possible and start dreaming out loud. Turning those dreams into something that actually works is the whole job to me. It starts with asking questions until I understand the problem someone is truly trying to solve, not just the steps they've always used to solve it.

What I'm looking for

Where I'm headed: a founding engineer role at an early-stage startup, bringing both sides of the table — the technical build and the creative, UX-driven judgment about what's worth building at all. I want high autonomy, real ownership, and very little process between an idea and a shipped feature. I'm especially drawn to AI-native products in data, BI, and developer tools — places where a strong opinion about the user experience changes what the product can be.

Top skills

Product EngineeringAI-Native DevelopmentLLM Agents & Tool UseReact & TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLData VisualizationNext.js

Education

Utah State University

Master's, Management Information Systems

Data Visualization specialty · 2010 – 2012

// stack

OpenAI / LLMsD3.jsTypeScriptReactNext.jsNode.jsPostgreSQLPrismaTailwind CSSAWSCloudflare WorkersKubernetesGoElectron

// experience

10+ years across startups and enterprise, including running my own company and taking a few projects from zero to shipped.

Where I've owned the outcome

Real Growth Media

Founder, current

I decide what happens here, and I live with the results.

Omadi, Senior Web Application Developer

2017 – 2019

Took a greenfield platform from mock-ups to production in days, replacing an enterprise incumbent.

DB AI

Personal project

Solo-built, spec to shipped.

  1. Senior Software Engineer

    SchoolAICurrent

    Oct 2025 – Present · Lehi, Utah

    Building AI-powered tools that make school awesome for students and teachers. (See the SchoolAI page for more.)

  2. Founder

    Real Growth MediaCurrent

    May 2023 – Present · Lehi, Utah

    My own company: I decide what to build. I bring 13+ years of React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Postgres, plus AI tooling built on OpenAI's APIs, to help ventures get off the ground.

  3. Sr. Fullstack Software Engineer

    Angel Studios

    Feb 2025 – Oct 2025 · Provo, Utah

    Built customer support tools for managing memberships using Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, Prisma, and Tailwind CSS.

  4. Frontend Lead / Engineering Manager

    Weave HQ

    Jan 2022 – May 2023 · Lehi, Utah

    Led the frontend team and managed a group of engineers rebuilding Weave's scheduling platform from the ground up. Set technical direction, mentored new engineers, and owned the architecture calls, all while delivering scalable, enterprise-class features to 27k+ users with TypeScript, React, Go, Postgres, Kubernetes, and gRPC.

  5. Senior Front End Software Engineer

    Weave HQ

    Dec 2020 – Feb 2022 · Lehi, Utah

    Helped multiple teams build world-class features for 27k+ customers — payments, scheduling, analytics, and phone experiences — using TypeScript, React, NX, and Vite.

  6. Instructor

    Mountainland Technical College

    Mar 2021 – Dec 2021 · Lehi, Utah

    Taught React frontend development to a class of 20–25 students: React, Node.js, TypeScript, API development, state management, and the soft skills that prepare people for the workforce.

  7. Engineering Manager

    Omadi, Inc.

    Dec 2019 – Dec 2020 · Lehi, Utah

    Led a talented full-stack team to solve challenging problems and adopt better engineering practices, owning administrative, HR, and project-management duties alongside a dedicated product manager.

  8. Senior Web Application Developer

    Omadi, Inc.

    Jun 2017 – Dec 2019 · Lehi, Utah

    Took full ownership of frontend architecture for a greenfield platform that displaced Oracle Field Services at a prominent global company, taking it from mock-ups to shipped solutions in days.

  9. Sr. Web Application / Data Visualization Engineer

    Numetric

    Jun 2016 – Jun 2017 · American Fork, Utah

    Built a custom dashboard creation tool and high-performance data visualizations with D3 and React, plus a complete ESRI-based geospatial mapping solution.

  10. Front End & Data Visualization Architect

    One Click Retail

    Dec 2014 – Jun 2016 · Sandy, Utah

    Lead frontend architect for a B2B web application — built a single-page app on AngularJS and D3, migrating a legacy PHP/jQuery site to a modular, testable architecture.

  11. Framework Web Application Developer / Data Viz Architect

    Ancestry.com

    Dec 2013 – Dec 2014 · Provo, Utah

    Architected a robust internal-tools web application for the cross-cutting framework team and engineered the move from server-rendered pages to a single-page application.

  12. Enterprise Web Application Developer

    Venafi

    Apr 2012 – Jul 2013 · Sandy, Utah

    Lead developer and architect for a custom data-visualization dashboard using dynamic SVG. Drove the shift to agile, iterative UX and stood up the company's first UI/UX team.

// projects

Things I'm building

Theater Stack

Production management for community theater

A platform that helps community theaters run their productions — auditions, casting, scheduling, and the dozens of moving pieces a show requires — in one place.

Explore

Just Write

AI-powered desktop editor for authors

A book-writing app that pairs a distraction-free editor with AI that actually understands your story — tracking characters, locations, and timelines, catching inconsistencies and plot holes as you write. I wrote my first book entirely on it.

Explore

Utilio

Browser-based utilities & AI tools

A growing suite of fast, private, browser-based utilities — image, video, audio, and text tools, AI helpers, and even swim-meet management — served from one codebase across multiple subdomains via host-based routing.

Explore

DB AI

An AI-assisted SQL explorer for PostgreSQL

A desktop database client that pairs a modern SQL workbench with an AI assistant. It grounds a large language model in your live schema to turn plain-English questions into runnable SQL, making it possible to explore a Postgres database by describing what you want rather than remembering exact syntax. The goal was to distill the most valuable capabilities of tools like DBeaver, TablePlus, DataGrip, and Chat2DB into a focused, AI-first workflow.

Explore
See all projects