I moved to the US from the Philippines in 2009 at 14 years old - a fresh start in a new world. Fast forward through high school and into the workforce, I spent years managing meat departments at Safeway and Lucky's, where I learned how to lead teams, solve problems on the fly, and serve customers with wildly different needs.
Then 2022 happened. Becoming a dad changed everything. Suddenly, I wanted a career that offered more flexibility, more growth, and the chance to be present for my family. That same year, I stumbled into coding while exploring the Axie Infinity community tools, got hooked, and enrolled in Harvard's CS50.
What started as curiosity turned into obsession. I completed General Assembly's 24-week bootcamp, worked as a software developer intern at RadicalX, trained AI models at Scale AI, and joined Atlas Agent as an intern. Then came the opportunity I'd been working toward: a software engineering internship at LinkedIn.
At LinkedIn, I built VELMA - an internal tool that's processed over 3,000 vanity URL requests. I led zero-trust security migrations, worked with Kubernetes and enterprise infrastructure, and shipped production code that real engineers use daily. It was the validation that this career pivot was the right call.
Now I'm back at Lucky's, building side projects like FamilyHub and my Schedule Parser Bot while exploring full-time opportunities. The journey from meat cutter to software engineer might be unconventional, but it taught me that the best solutions come from understanding real problems - whether you're behind a counter or a keyboard.
