Experience

Sean Nam Senior software engineer and former startup CTO. Shipping products end to end with spec driven Claude Code workflows.

I'm an agentic engineering early adopter shipping production products end to end with spec-driven Claude Code workflows. I've spent 7+ years scaling teams and platforms from seed through Series A, including a startup CTO tenure leading system modernizations, core product infrastructure, and cross-functional partnership with product and business leaders.

I'm comfortable at every layer, from writing production code to owning the engineering team and all technical functions. I'm targeting Applied AI and agentic engineering roles, and Senior or Staff Software Engineer positions at big tech and big AI companies.

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Work Experience

Companies, roles, and the work that shaped them

Nov 2024 – Now

Independent Engineering & Agentic Development

Remote | Nov 2024 to Present

Independent engineering practice focused on agentic development with Claude Code. I ship production micro-SaaS products, iOS apps, and personal LLM tooling end to end with spec-driven workflows.

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Sep – Nov 2025

Saidi Health

Remote | Sept 2025 to Nov 2025

Pre-seed venture studio startup. Short engagement where I provided hands-on senior engineering leadership during an early product phase, re-architecting the codebase and shipping the MVP.

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Mar – May 2025

Stealth Pre-Seed Startup

Remote | March 2025 to May 2025

Fractional CTO engagement for a pre-seed founder. I took over a stalled build, replaced outside contractors, and shipped the first working prototype in six weeks.

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2022 – 2023

Open Avenues

Remote | Dec 2022 to June 2023

Global Talent fellowship and software development mentorship, held concurrently with my Ivy Energy CTO tenure. I designed and led a six-week internship program for college interns building a React solar calculator.

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2020 – 2024

Ivy Energy

San Diego, CA | Jan 2020 to Nov 2024

Seed-stage cleantech startup enabling apartment buildings to allocate onsite solar generation to individual residents. The product covered resident solar bills, owner and asset manager reporting, and integrations with property management systems, supporting California Title 24 compliance. I joined as the first full-time engineering hire and grew with the company, from Founding Software Engineer to Head of Engineering to Chief Technology Officer. During my tenure Ivy grew from 2 customers (~200 units) to 30 customers (6,000+ units), with 50,000+ additional units in the onboarding pipeline.

Chief Technology Officer Nov 2021 to Nov 2024
Head of Engineering Nov 2020 to Nov 2021
Founding Software Engineer Jan 2020 to Nov 2020

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Class of 2019

Education

BS Computer Science

UC San Diego

2015 – 2016

Republic of Korea Air Force

South Korea | Feb 2015 to June 2016

Mandatory military service with the Republic of Korea Air Force. I served as a software engineer on secure web platforms and was recognized with the Armed Forces Communication Command Military Award for development contributions.

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Early Ventures

Before the career track

Long before the first full-time job, there was a business.

Indie Mobile Publishing Business (2013 to 2016)

I ran an independent mobile app publishing business starting as a teenager. Shipped 50+ original games and apps across iOS, Android, and Amazon that reached over 550,000 downloads. Handled the full operation end to end: product, design, development, monetization, and distribution, including integrated ad networks, rewarded video, analytics, in-app support, and review prompts. A separate portfolio of 10+ titles built with game-builder software drove another 50,000+ downloads on top.

50+ titles shipped and 550,000+ downloads while still in high school and college.

iOS
Android
Amazon
Ad Networks
Analytics

Recognition & Awards

Beyond the code

SDBJ Leaders of Influence in Technology 2024

Recognized by the San Diego Business Journal for technology leadership and impact.

7CTOs Podcast: The Realities of Fundraising →

Guest on the 7CTOs podcast discussing the realities of fundraising, engineering leadership, and scaling a startup.

1st Place, Zoo Hackathon 2017

Won first place at Zoo Hackathon 2017 for an SMS chatbot integrating Google Cloud Vision for ML image analysis.

Armed Forces Communication Command Military Award

Awarded for software development contributions during military service in the Republic of Korea Air Force.

Skills & Technologies

The stack, end to end

Languages: TypeScript JavaScript Python Swift Java C C++ C# Objective-C PHP HTML CSS Bash
Frameworks & Libraries: React React Native Next.js Node.js Express Flutter Three.js jQuery Handlebars.js SnapKit ResearchKit
AI & Agentic: Claude Code Spec-driven agentic workflows LLM integrations
Databases: PostgreSQL MySQL Oracle SQL MongoDB DynamoDB Supabase NeonDB Snowflake
Cloud & Infra: AWS (EC2, SQS, CloudWatch, Lambda, RDS, CloudFormation, EFS, VPC, EventBridge) Kubernetes Docker Vercel Firebase Google Cloud Vision
DevOps: Git GitHub Actions AWS CodeDeploy Travis CI Code Climate
Protocols & APIs: OAuth 1/2 REST HTTP(S) JSON XML OpenSSL
Leadership: Team scaling and mentorship Cross-functional collaboration Budgets and roadmaps GTM Hiring (400+ interviews conducted)
Tools: VS Code Xcode Eclipse Unity Asana Jira Trello

Let's Talk

Think I might be a fit?

I'm looking for my next senior or staff software engineering role, focused on Applied AI or agentic engineering. If that sounds like what you're hiring for, drop me a line and I'll get back to you.

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I also take on fractional CTO advisory work with founders scaling past funding. See FCTO services →