About Me
I'm a founder/operator and applied AI engineer based in Syracuse, NY.
I use Codex and Claude Code as part of my daily engineering workflow, and I'm focused on turning real problems into shipped software people can react to quickly.
My recent work includes:
- Vibe Storefront, a solo-built AI product-validation app with an MVP live within 4 hours.
- TryLaunchLoop, a developer-marketing tool my friend and I are building in public on Twitch for builders trying to turn real product progress into useful distribution.
- PortDeck, an AI-native local runtime dashboard for Mac that organizes ports, worktrees, Docker services, and localhost state.
- TrySignalHire, a solo-built AI hiring MVP I'm building to make real candidate evidence easier to collect, review, and trust.
- Gridiron Rumble, a solo-built playable web arcade football game with an iOS TestFlight release.
I also bring 8+ years of production engineering from Equitable, where I ship customer-facing software in a regulated environment: high-traffic product pages, enterprise platform migrations, internal portals, chatbot work, and reusable systems.
I also bring founder/operator experience through Hack Upstate and Careers in Code. I helped run a 6-month coding bootcamp across 6 cohorts, taught developers, built admissions and operations systems from scratch, managed grant-backed programs, admitted 102 students, graduated 74, and helped 24 graduates move into tech roles. I've also organized 100+ person hackathons that brought developers, students, sponsors, and local organizations together to help advance Central New York’s tech community.
I'm most interested in applied AI, AI product engineering, automation, developer tools, and roles where I can bridge product judgment, technical execution, and real user problems.
Why Resend
I want to join Resend because it sits at the intersection of three things I care about: product craft, developer trust, and making a hard infrastructure problem feel simple.
Email has always been deceptively hard. It looks like a solved problem until you have to wire it into a real product, handle deliverability, make the developer experience clean, and still give users confidence that the important message will actually land. What stands out to me about Resend is that you have turned that messy category into something that feels like a modern developer product: a clear API, strong docs, good taste, and a story builders understand.
That combination matters more than ever. When I choose software now, I am looking at three things: is the product actually good, do I trust the story behind the team, and does the developer experience make me want to keep building? Resend checks all three boxes. I have read through the handbook, philosophy, marketing docs, and job description, and the way the team talks about craft, ownership, remote work, and "just ship it" feels very close to how I already work.
The personal fit is the real reason I am applying. I am already the kind of developer Resend is trying to reach. I use Resend in side projects, I build AI/SaaS products in public, I write about software, I stream product work on Twitch, and I have spent years teaching developers how to understand new tools. I also care enough about this exact problem space that I am building TryLaunchLoop, a tool for developers and indie SaaS builders who struggle to turn real product progress into marketing without losing the thread of the work.
That is not abstract for me. In my current product work, Resend is already the email layer I reach for: TrySignalHire uses the Resend SDK for early-access email, and TryLaunchLoop uses Resend-backed SMTP for waitlist and auth email. So when I say Resend makes email feel like a developer product, that comes from building with it, not just reading the docs.
At Resend, I would want to help make developers feel what I felt when I found the product: this is clear, this is useful, and this team gets it. That means writing sharp docs and tutorials, building demos that prove the product quickly, turning customer stories into useful material, and bringing developer feedback back into the product. I think I can help Resend keep earning developer trust as it grows.
How I Think About Marketing To Developers
Marketing to developers works when it feels like useful proof, not performance. Developers are skeptical for good reason. They have seen too many polished launches that collapse the second they try to wire the thing into a real app. So my default approach is simple: show the product working, explain the tradeoffs honestly, and make the next step obvious. Good developer marketing should help someone understand, trust, or try the product faster.
That usually means a few things. Write like a real person. Build demos that answer the question a developer already has in their head. Show code early. Make the docs and changelog part of the brand, not an afterthought. Treat social as a place to share useful context, not just announcements. Bring users into the journey so they feel like they are watching the product get better in public.
I have felt this pain myself. I am building TryLaunchLoop because developers and indie SaaS builders often ship real work, then struggle to explain it consistently. The interesting part is not "post more." The interesting part is turning actual progress - a commit, a feature, a customer conversation, a launch, a bug fix - into a story people can understand. That is the kind of marketing I believe in: real work, translated clearly. On X, that approach has taken me from roughly 170 followers to roughly 1,200 by engaging with founders, builders, and people shipping real things instead of chasing generic growth tactics.
I also think developer marketing should be fun without getting unserious. The best devtool brands make people want to be part of the world around the product. They have a point of view. They give builders something to react to, learn from, and share. Resend already has that shape: strong product taste, clean visual identity, opinionated docs, and a team that seems willing to say what it believes. I would want to extend that with clear writing, useful demos, customer stories, and social material that makes developers feel like Resend is building with them, not marketing at them.
Writing And Demos
The writing sample I would submit for this role is Modern Software Engineering, which is a personal essay about AI changing software work, why systems thinking still matters, and how the job shifts when the tools get faster.
For broader writing context, my blog archive has technical explainers, AI/product essays, and practical notes on building with Codex, Claude Code, MCP, RAG, job applications, and public product work.
I want to be direct about the process: my recent writing is AI-assisted. I use AI to draft, restructure, pressure-test, and edit, and I have been actively rethinking how I write with AI. The point of view is still mine, but the workflow is part of the story because it is how I actually work now.
Related context: How I Write With AI and Marketing System With Claude.
Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Equitable · Syracuse, NY · July 2017 - Present
- Use Codex and Claude Code/Opus as part of my daily engineering workflow to accelerate planning, implementation, debugging, and legacy modernization while keeping enterprise security, SDLC, and compliance constraints in view
- Rapidly prototyped the PCR Rates page in days when business stakeholders were stuck in abstract requirements discussions, then led the production redesign that now drives thousands of daily views and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in business impact
- Migrated 150 pages from Sitecore to Adobe AEM with zero downtime, collaborating with vendor teams to compress an originally 9-month migration plan into roughly 3 months
- Led the migration of an Angular to vanilla JavaScript Retirement Guide, architecting the separation of content and code
- Used AI-assisted modernization to migrate RIG, a 10+ year-old Angular 1 retirement-planning app with outdated dependencies and security vulnerabilities, into a modern AEM component while preserving the core calculator behavior
- Enhanced FMG website intake forms by simplifying a feedback workflow spanning hundreds of questions and enabling PDF email summaries of advisor responses; improved usability and documentation for the intake process
- Drove the enterprise CMS through 3 major version upgrades (Sitecore 9.1 → 9.3 → 10.2 → 10.3), organizing data migration processes and issue tracking to ensure smooth cutovers
- Shipped the OBP customer portal (React, Java) to help onboard new brokers from outside firms into the organization
- Led chatbot development with Microsoft Bot Framework on Azure, serving as lead engineer and managing the project backlog from prototype through MVP
- Served as lead engineer across major customer-facing web initiatives, taking projects from requirements and stakeholder alignment through implementation, production launch, and post-launch reliability
Partner
Hack Upstate LLC · Syracuse, NY · 2017 - Present
- Directed and taught in Careers in Code, a 6-month coding bootcamp, as the founder/operator for day-to-day program delivery across 6 cohorts (2019-2024)
- Admitted 102 students, graduated 74 (72.5% graduation rate), placed 24 graduates in tech roles
- Managed approximately $1.1M in grant-backed program funding across local government and economic development partners
- Built the operational stack from scratch: admissions workflows, automation, student tracking, reporting, stipends, partner communications, and EOS-based goal tracking using Pipefy, Zapier, Notion, PEX, and related tools
- Organized 100+ person hackathons that brought developers, students, sponsors, and local organizations together to advance Central New York’s tech community
Education
B.S. Computer Science, Mathematics Minor
SUNY Potsdam · 2015 - 2017
- Benjamin F. Bradley Memorial Award — High achievement & outstanding department contribution
- Founded Hack Potsdam (grew from 49 to 116 attendees, $10K raised, MLH partnership). President of ACM. GPA: 3.25
- Speaker at HackCon V — "Getting Your Alumni Involved," presented to a national audience of student hackathon organizers
Rapidly Prototyped Projects
Vibe Storefront
LaunchedSolo-built and launched an AI product-validation app that turns a plain-English product idea into a shareable storefront concept. The MVP was live within 4 hours, with structured positioning, product copy, imagery, public share pages, and a gallery so ideas can be tested before the roadmap gets expensive.
TryLaunchLoop
BuildingDeveloper-marketing tool my friend and I built in public on Twitch for builders who would rather be shipping features than keeping a marketing calendar alive. Built from the real pain of turning commit logs, product progress, live-stream work, and launch context into useful distribution without losing focus on the product; this same builder-facing approach helped me grow X from roughly 170 to roughly 1,200 followers.
TrySignalHire
BuildingSolo-built founder/builder MVP for the broken AI-mediated hiring market. Candidate work becomes sourced claims, company jobs become evidence signals, OpenAI organizes the overlap, and hiring teams review proof before another resume screen.
How does RAG work?
PrototypeInteractive visualization of the full RAG pipeline. Shows every step live: query term analysis, similarity search across all chunks, source retrieval with scores, and augmented generation with citations. Hover any word to see where it appears in retrieved sources. Runs fully locally without an API key.
How does MCP work?
PrototypeInteractive visualization of the full Model Context Protocol pipeline. Shows every step live: tool discovery via JSON-RPC, AI-driven tool selection, tool execution with request/response visualization, and response generation. Supports multi-tool queries. Runs fully locally without an API key.
Recommendations
“What stands out about Jesse isn't just that he can build software — it's how he thinks. He has a rare ability to translate complex technical concepts to people who aren't engineers, which is something you can't really teach. I've watched him do it with students who came in with zero background and left with marketable skills and jobs. I've also watched his thinking evolve around AI over the years. He's living in it, building with it every day, and asking the right questions. The way he talks about what Claude Code has unlocked for him reminded me of how early Bitcoin engineers talked about what they were building.”
— Doug Crescenzi, Partner at Hack Upstate LLC · April 1, 2026
“Jesse approaches problems systematically. He doesn't look for quick fixes or gets distracted by complex solutions. Instead, he works through the problem methodically — mapping out options, weighing tradeoffs, and arriving at decisions that hold up when you actually have to engineer them. Beyond the technical side, Jesse has a rare ability to bring people together. This kind of role demands both — systematic reasoning and the ability to build trust across audiences. Jesse has spent years developing both. I recommend him without reservation. He'll make an impact quickly, and he'll do it by doing the hard work of understanding problems deeply and building the right solutions.”
— William Kennedy, Mentor · April 3, 2026, via LinkedIn
“Delivering a life-changing program like this takes a lot of vision, organization skills, and the ability to make quick decisions; Jesse handled all of it calmly and always had his eye on student outcomes. What I appreciate most about him is his ability to get it all done and make it look effortless. Jesse's technical fluency and his ability to navigate complex program logistics while leading a team make him a rare asset in the coding world. I highly recommend working with him if you happen upon the chance.”
— Laura Thorne, Career Coach at Careers in Code · April 3, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I had the pleasure of working with Jesse at Equitable, where he consistently found innovative ways to improve our public and advisor-facing websites. While building our Cap Rate webpage, he handled changing specs and requirements with ease—never complaining, always quickly pivoting to an effective solution. He is a master problem solver with a true can-do attitude and was an absolute pleasure to work with. I would highly recommend him to any team looking for a driven, adaptable, and results-oriented technologist.”
— Tom Dominic, Colleague at Equitable · April 2, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I've worked with Jesse for several years at Equitable on our digital annuity tools, and he's one of the best partners I've had the pleasure of working with. He's someone you can rely on both in building solutions and when challenges come up. He consistently brings creative ideas, communicates clearly, and stays calm under pressure. He brings a positive attitude to everything he does and makes the team better.”
— Nick Ronan, Colleague at Equitable · April 3, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I had the pleasure of working with Jesse at AXA Equitable, where we built several projects together both at work and on the side. Jesse has a genuine passion for innovation and was always pushing us to try new technologies and experiment with ideas. His curiosity and critical thinking are contagious, and he naturally motivates the people around him. One thing that really stands out is his ability to explain complex technical concepts in a simple way that anyone can understand. He's a great teammate, a strong leader, and someone who brings positive energy to any team he's part of.”
— Paul Kwoyelo, Colleague at Equitable · April 6, 2026, via LinkedIn
“Jesse has an unwavering commitment to innovation and exploration in everything he does. As my first mentor, he taught me an incredible amount simply through his "let's-do-this" approach to complex, multifaceted problems. Jesse is an exceptional communicator who can bridge the gap between deep engineering and cross-functional stakeholders, creating a culture where ideas are vetted based on merit rather than hierarchy. The bottom line: Jesse cares. He is deeply mission-driven and solves difficult problems not just with a track record of success, but with a persistent optimism and genuine care for his colleagues. P.S. He also shreds on the guitar.”
— Max Gerlach, Program Manager at Careers in Code · April 3, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I have had the distinct honor of working with and being mentored by Jesse Peplinski. His deep skill set in web-based technologies and AI tools is clearly evident throughout his extensive resume, and I have witnessed his technical prowess firsthand while working with him at Hack Upstate and Careers in Code. Spending time around Jesse has led me to observe what is arguably his greatest quality: his unmatched thirst for technical knowledge. I have never met anyone who dives in as quickly to learn a new tool, framework, or technology.”
— Andrew Wladis, Mentee · April 1, 2026, via LinkedIn
“Jesse was my first true 'boss' and helped mentor me into the person I am today through our work together at Careers in Code, a coding boot camp. Even more than his warm, kind personality, Jesse's innate ability to lead by example, intelligently navigate complex issues and run projects with a solution-oriented mindset has been nearly unmatched in my career. I watched as he was able to spearhead a meaningful project with real impact on the community — an effort that similarly taught me the value of thoughtful communication, excellence in organization and problem solving both in the terminal and face-to-face with people. I'd highly recommend Jesse for any role — particularly one where his leadership skills can be put on full display.”
— Will Guisbond, Program Manager at Careers in Code · April 1, 2026, via LinkedIn
“Jesse is an incredibly smart and passionate developer. Jesse was organized, communicative, and very responsive to any questions that I or students had. He helped create and guide the full stack web development curriculum and managed a team of approximately 10 staff including instructors, TAs, and support staff. I highly recommend Jesse and believe that you will find him to be a hard-working, intelligent, and supportive team member!”
— Jason Scharf, Student Success Rep at Careers in Code · April 7, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I watched him develop from a sharp developer into a true systems thinker and someone who naturally steps up as a leader. Jesse has always stood out because he doesn't just fix the immediate issue — he steps back and looks at the bigger picture to understand why the problem happened in the first place. On top of his strong technical skills, Jesse is an excellent collaborator. He has a real talent for taking high-level business needs and turning them into clean, scalable code while keeping everyone on the same page. Jesse is a thoughtful problem solver, a generous mentor, and someone who sees the bigger picture.”
— Zachary Peck, Colleague at Equitable · April 7, 2026, via LinkedIn
“Jesse is a person with a 'can do' attitude who will not take no for an answer. He is unique in his determination to find an innovative way to get the job done. He also has a knack for teaching. He inspires those around him and works well collaboratively to help others succeed in their projects and endeavors.”
— Mark Wladis, Mentor · April 1, 2026, via LinkedIn
“I've worked at Equitable with Jesse for 8 years, and it's been incredible to see his evolution into such a strong and dependable software developer. He combines technical skill with a calm, strategic mindset, always taking the time to understand the "why" behind problems before jumping to solutions. His work with Careers in Code has always been something that I've admired about him and truly believe he has made a difference in some many peoples lives. He's not only someone you can count on to deliver when working on projects, but also someone who brings positive energy and motivates those around him. Any team would be lucky to have him.”
— Lizmarie Von Langen, Colleague at Equitable · April 15, 2026, via LinkedIn
The Meta
I built this application packet the same way I work: grounded in the actual role, with a tailored page, a tailored resume, clear source material, and a direct API submission path.
The application itself is a small example of the work I like doing: use the tool, understand the product, write the story clearly, and ship something concrete.
Related posts:
Let's Talk
I'd love to discuss how I can help Resend keep earning developer trust as it grows.
