- Based in
- Cali, Colombia (GMT-5)
- Shipping since
- 2016
- Role
- Senior FullStack Engineer
- Languages
- Spanish (native) · English (C2)
- Focus
- AI-assisted development
My first paid code shipped in 2016, at a small software studio in Cali, straight out of a game development program at SENA. Learning to program by making games left me with a conviction I never dropped: software people enjoy using is a feature, not a luxury.
Since then I've spent eight-plus years shipping for companies across the Americas. Real-time transaction services, group video calls, dashboards with drag-and-drop, delivery platforms. I went from engineer to senior in under two years at a consulting firm, and today I ship products for international clients as a Senior FullStack Engineer.
I got AI wrong before I got it right.
I treated it like a faster autocomplete: vague prompt in, patch out, repeat. One session, a careless git stash ate eight of the ten files I'd been working on, and I rebuilt them from memory. That week pushed me to specs, tests, and git worktrees — a workflow where the model understands the project before writing a line. The whole story is in AI Gave Me Speed. Tests Gave Me Control.
This site is where I show that work. Every diagram in the posts is a live component you can poke (there are 30-plus of them in the lab), the todo app I plan my days with is mine, and the workflow the blog describes is the same one this site is built with.
Now
- Finished my B.Eng. in Systems Engineering and the Claude Certified Architect exam, both this year.
- Building todo.valdemird.com — AI scheduling, Pomodoro, drag-and-drop.
- Exploring on-device AI in the browser. If your Chrome supports it, the chat button in the corner runs locally on your machine.
- Writing about interactive components and running Claude agents in parallel.
What I work with
Frontend
Backend
DevOps & Cloud
AI & Tooling
Journey
Senior FullStack Engineer · Nearshore Tech Company
Products for international clients: React, Next.js, cloud infrastructure.
Software Engineer → Senior · Software Consulting Firm
Engineer to senior in under two years, across several client projects.
Software Developer · Dev Agency
Real-time transactional services, group video calls, PDF report generators.
Freelance Engineer · Independent
Android apps, Arduino IoT integrations, Firebase backends.
Junior Developer · Software Studio
First professional role. Where it all started.
What I believe in
Spec-driven development
Write the spec before the code. Let the LLM be your co-architect, not just your typist.
I wrote about this →Build in public
Share what you learn. The best way to solidify knowledge is to teach it.
I wrote about this →Beauty & function
Tools should be beautiful and functional. Design is part of the message, not a coat of paint.
I wrote about this →Background & credentials
Claude Certified Architect – Foundations Certification
Anthropic's formal certification on architecting with Claude. The exam version of what the posts here document in practice: specs, agents, and tooling.
Verify credential →Get in touch
I live in Cali, Colombia. Outside client work I build small multiplayer games at games.valdemird.com and tweak this site's components more than I should. If you want to talk shop, the form above or any of these works.