Hello, I'm Ryan

I am a Full-Stack Web Application Development Manager by day, and an experimental builder by night.

For a long time, I've kept my projects and thoughts tucked away in private repositories and local folders. This blog is my effort to change that - to get more out there and share the lessons I've learned from leading teams and building software.

What I Do

I lead full-stack engineering teams building high-availability web applications and video streaming platforms. In my professional life, I am deeply passionate about Operational Excellence and using that to de-stress teams and help them build what's most important.

What I'm Building

Away from my day job, I dive into side projects that spark my interests and half-baked business ideas. Here's what I've created recently:

FetchTag — A full-stack QR code platform built with FastAPI and React. Create a QR code, point it anywhere, update the destination any time, and track how many times it's been scanned.

NextUp Karaoke — A real-time karaoke queue app built with FastAPI, React, and WebSockets. Guests join from their phones, search YouTube for karaoke tracks, and add songs to a shared live queue — no page refresh needed.

You can find these and my other experiments on GitHub at github.com/giantryansaul.

Why This Blog?

Building software is hard, and I've always found that talking through it helps everyone get better at the process. The goal here is to share more ideas - whether that's lessons from leading engineering teams, post-mortems on side projects, or just things I wish I'd known earlier.

What Else?

Outside of software I'm a hobby photographer, birder, and improv comedy performer. These interests have a funny way of leaking into how I think about software and teams, so don't be surprised if they show up here too.