Technology leadership. Hands-on execution.

I lead technology teams, build software platforms, and help organizations put AI to work. After more than 20 years across software, infrastructure, design, and operations, I still do a good share of the architecture and building myself.

Jesse Davis in a dark blazer, arms crossed
20+
years across software, infrastructure, design, and operations
14+
years at a California university, from one campus to many
AI
adoption and AI-enabled systems, from policy to production

What I bring

The problems I work on rarely fit in one box.

A team outgrows its tools. A platform has to keep growing without falling over. An organization wants AI to be useful without being careless about it. Each of those is part people, part technology, and part operations, and I've spent my career working on all three.

  1. Leading and developing teams

    At a university in California, I lead two departments: Information Technology and Web Technology. Over more than 14 years I've built software and grown both teams as the university expanded from one small campus into a multi-campus operation. The work covers enterprise applications, software engineering, infrastructure, security, vendors, and day-to-day operations. A lot of it is about people: hiring well, building trust, and helping others grow into leaders.

  2. Building and running real platforms

    I never stepped away from the technical work. I stay involved in architecture and implementation, and separately I build platforms for clients, handling both the application and the production infrastructure. Some have run for years with real customers and real transactions behind them. Keeping systems like that reliable teaches you things a planning document can't.

  3. Making AI useful, with oversight

    Recently much of my focus has been AI adoption across an organization. That means working with departments to find uses that actually help, setting clear expectations for safe and compliant use, and developing the technology leaders who will guide implementation. I also build software this way myself, with agentic development pipelines backed by human review, independent checks, automated testing, and controlled releases. It has given me a practical sense of where these tools earn their keep and where they need a firm hand.

  4. Starting from how the work gets done

    Good technical decisions start with the operation. Before I choose a system, I want to know who will use it, what happens when it fails, who supports it after hours, and what it costs to keep running. Those questions decide more projects than the architecture does.

How I got here

My path wasn't a straight line. I've come to see that as an advantage.

  • The Army

    I worked on military intelligence systems. That work taught me to take reliability seriously and to plan for the moment something breaks.

  • Manufacturing

    At a high-end American manufacturer, I worked in design, software development, and production management. Seeing how products actually get made, and how much depends on the people doing the work, still shapes how I think about usability and operations.

  • Design

    Design never left me. I love solving problems in ways people actually enjoy, and I've learned that simple is usually the hardest thing to get right.

Contact

Let's talk.

I enjoy trading notes with people who lead technology teams, build platforms, or are working out what AI should actually do inside their organization. If that sounds like you, I'd be glad to hear from you.