Full-stack · AI in products · Creative coding
Geoffrey Heckmann.
I build the machine. Then I run it. Then I hand it over.
01Work
Twelve years, catalogued.
Twenty things, six disciplines. Turn a card over for what it took.
Etix Everywhere · 2014QR-code physical access system for a datacenter floor — the credential is printed, the check is embedded.
02Experience
Twelve years, nine posts, four of them CTO.
03Stack
Everything I can actually operate.
Every capability I have, worth up to five skill points and laid out the way it was learned: a cell opens once a neighbour in its own discipline has a point in it. Nothing can be driven past what has actually shipped — the cells that stop short say so on the rim.
- Leadership & Product: Four CTO seats. The part that does not compile.
- Technical strategy & roadmap — 5 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Twelve years of deciding what not to build.
- Architecture review & due diligence — 5 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Reading someone else's system before money moves.
- Hiring & engineering culture — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Teams built from zero, twice over.
- Team leadership · 4 CTO seats — 5 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Objectify, Ternoa, ViVoka, Meria.
- Product direction — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Roadmaps that survive contact with users.
- Founder & board alignment — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Translating engineering reality upward.
- Frontend & Creative Coding: Where the machine gets a face.
- TypeScript · React · Next.js — 5 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. The daily instrument. App Router, RSC, the lot.
- Three.js · React Three Fiber — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Every 3D object on this page.
- GLSL shaders · procedural geometry — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Nothing here is a texture file.
- Simulation & motion design — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Motion derived, not keyframed.
- Tailwind · design systems — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Tokens first, components second.
- React Native · Unity · C# — 3 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Shipped mobile and real-time before the web caught up.
- Backend & Infrastructure: The part nobody sees until it stops.
- Node · Python · Rust · C/C++ — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Down to the metal when the metal is the problem.
- Postgres · MongoDB · Redis — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Schema design, migrations, the cost of both.
- REST · GraphQL · RPC — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Contracts that outlive their authors.
- Vercel · GCP · Cloudflare · Supabase — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Deployed, metered, and paid for.
- Observability · Sentry · PostHog — 3 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. You cannot run what you cannot see.
- AI: One genuine credential, and a deliberate rebuild.
- Voice AI SDK · shipped, 4 years — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. ViVoka. Four years, in production, on device.
- Applied ML product leadership — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Scoping what a model is actually allowed to decide.
- LLM app integration — 3 of 5 skill points — in build. In build — shipped internally, not yet for a client.
- RAG · embeddings · vector stores — 2 of 5 skill points — in build. In build — retrieval quality is the whole game.
- Agentic tooling · MCP — 2 of 5 skill points — in build. In build — tools, not chat.
- Evals & prompt workflow — 2 of 5 skill points — in build. In build — the only honest way to claim the rest.
- Web3: History, not identity. Still load-bearing.
- Solidity · smart-contract architecture — 5 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Contracts in production holding real assets.
- EVM chains · Viem · Ethers — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Mainnet, L2s, and the gas bills.
- Substrate · Rust chains — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. An L1 in Polkadot, from inception to launch.
- Audits & security review — 4 of 5 skill points — shipped in production. Commissioned them, answered them, fixed them.
04Method
The same three acts, every time.
Act I · Noise
There's noise first.
Six directions, three stacks, a deadline and no consensus. The first job isn't building — it's finding out which of those things are real, and saying so out loud.
Act 1 of 3
05Contact
Let's talk.
If you have a product and no CTO, or a CTO and no time — that's what I'm for. Fractional engineering leadership, an architecture second opinion, AI inside an existing product, or a build from zero.