Tim Urista
CTO Builder & AI Architect—Scaling Code, Careers, and Chaos. From product strategy → ML systems → cloud-native infra, I ship AI platforms that deliver ROI.
I've spent the last decade building and scaling systems that matter—from 6th-grade grammar apps to handling 100M+ LLM requests at Apple. My journey blends deep technical expertise with real-world resilience, having navigated everything from startup pivots to enterprise migrations.
Currently, I architect AI-first platforms that bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and production reality. Whether it's designing multi-cloud Kubernetes infrastructures, implementing LoRA strategy switchers, or building RAG systems that actually work, I focus on delivering measurable outcomes amid the chaos of rapid growth.
When I'm not deep in code or infrastructure, you'll find me writing about the intersection of technology and resilience, hosting the Trendvesting podcast, or spending time with my PT wife who keeps me grounded through all the technical adventures.
Technical Expertise
AI/ML Systems
- • Go Agents & LLM Integration
- • RAG Systems & Vector Databases
- • LoRA/QLora Fine-tuning
- • Production ML Evals & Monitoring
- • Reinforcement Learning for Strategy Switching
Cloud Infrastructure
- • Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE)
- • Service Mesh (Istio, Linkerd)
- • Multi-cloud Architecture
- • CI/CD (ArgoCD, GitOps)
- • Cost Optimization & FinOps
Product Development
- • React/Next.js/Astro
- • TypeScript/Go/Python
- • Tailwind CSS & Design Systems
- • API Design & GraphQL
- • Performance Optimization
Leadership & Strategy
- • Technical Team Leadership
- • Architecture Decision Records
- • Risk Assessment & Mitigation
- • Incident Response & Postmortems
- • Technical Due Diligence
Journey Timeline
Founder & CTO
2024-PresentTrendvesting, Cerebro AI
Building AI-first platforms for social trading and sales automation. Scaling LoRA strategy switchers and agentic systems.
Senior Software Engineer
2022-2024Apple
AI infrastructure and LLM systems handling 100M+ requests. Focus on production ML pipelines and performance optimization.
Principal Engineer
2020-2022Roku
Led multi-cloud Kubernetes migration (ECS→EKS→multi-cloud) with $10-12M quarterly spend intelligence. $2.3M cost savings achieved.
Full Stack Engineer
2018-2020Meta (Facebook)
React/GraphQL platforms serving millions of users. Focus on performance optimization and data pipeline architecture.
Software Engineer
2016-2018HealthTrio
Healthcare data platforms and API development. Early experience with HIPAA-compliant cloud architecture.
Teacher & Early Developer
2014-20166th Grade Teaching + Side Projects
Started with grammar apps and educational tools. Learned to balance teaching with late-night coding sessions.
Values & Operating Principles
Bias to Instrument
Measure everything that matters. From infrastructure costs to ML model performance, data drives decisions.
Incident-Driven Learning
Every outage teaches. Post-mortems without blame, systems that fail gracefully, and documentation that saves 3am debugging.
Ship Small, Prove Big
Start with MVPs, iterate based on real usage, scale what works. Avoid over-engineering, embrace pragmatic solutions.
Ethics-First AI
Responsible AI development with transparency, fairness, and human oversight built into every system.
Press Kit
Bio Variants
Tim Urista is a CTO Builder & AI Architect with 10+ years scaling systems from startups to Apple. Author of "B*tch Slapped" and "Go Snowflake LLM," he specializes in production AI platforms and cloud-native infrastructure.
Tim Urista is a CTO Builder & AI Architect who has spent the last decade scaling systems that matter—from 6th-grade grammar apps to handling 100M+ LLM requests at Apple. His expertise spans AI/ML systems (RAG, LoRA, production evals), cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, multi-cloud, service mesh), and product development (React, Go, TypeScript). Currently founder of Trendvesting and Cerebro AI, Tim authors "B*tch Slapped" (life resilience) and "Go Snowflake LLM" (technical guide), hosts the Trendvesting podcast, and helps companies architect AI-first platforms that deliver measurable ROI.