Hi, I'm Dane

Over the years, I have been a mountaineering guide, woodworker, botanist, and cartographer. I have also worked as a principal software engineer, engineering manager, and director of engineering.

At Read AI, I'm building the engineering and data foundations for human and agentic development across the company.

In everything I do, I am drawn towards:

Leadership: I thrive on guiding people through challenging environments and resource constraints. The work is drawing out what each person does best. I'm a systems thinker, I bring curiosity to every problem, and I can go deep technically when it's needed. That mix lets me set direction, earn trust with engineers, and help the people around me grow.

Constant learning: I love diving deep into new topics and building things from scratch. Building is how I develop expertise. That expertise spans mapping, data processing, rendering, distributed computing, low-latency APIs, cloud-native formats, compilers, and profiling tools. It reaches into people, too: team building, hiring, mentoring, and organizational design. But I don't only build from scratch — I'm a passionate steward of things worth preserving, and I enjoy improving projects whether or not I built them.

Let's connect

You can reach me by email or on Bluesky.

I'm especially interested in connecting about:

Engineering leadership & founding teams: I'm currently a senior staff engineer at Read AI. Before that, I led engineering as a manager and director, and ran my own consultancy. These days I'm drawn to high-trust teams doing ambitious work, and I always enjoy meeting and learning from others who feel the same. You can also read my résumé.

Personal interests in holistic health & wellness: Outside of work, I'm exploring herbal medicine & wildcrafting, endurance cycling, sleep optimization, and somatic practices. I'm always looking to meet like-minded folks. If you share any of these interests, reach out — let's connect over coffee, virtually or in-person if you're local!

If you'd like to show appreciation for my open source work, you can buy me a coffee.

More about my background

For the formal career summary, see my résumé. The following are a few key roles I've held over the years that have shaped who I am today:

• Mountain Guide on Tahoma and Denali with RMI, in the North Cascades with Northwest Mountain School, and on Komo Kulshan with Nor'wester (1998-2003).
• Watson Fellow (2002-2003) studying raptors internationally, including the migratory movements of raptors through the Strait of Gibraltar and Talamancan rainforest of Costa Rica, the re-introduction of Harpy Eagles in Panama, and the summer movements of Cinereous Vultures in Mongolia.
• Founding team member of two non-profits, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and CUGOS, as well as one startup, Mapbox — whose technology was first incubated at Development Seed, where I started in 2010. I was one of Mapbox's first engineers and played a key role in growing the company, eventually becoming one of its first managers and directors. I was there from pre-seed through Series D (2010-2022).
• Contributor to OpenStreetMap, OSGEO, Mapnik, and the MapLibre Tile specification.
• Lead author of the Mapbox Vector Tile Specification and the first implementation. The format went on to become a widely used standard across the mapping industry.
• Speaker at conferences like FOSS4G, Where2.0/WhereCamp, and SOTM during my years focused on Mapnik, TileMill, and the Mapbox Vector Tile Specification (2007-2015).