Graham Place
Software engineer & leader.
Let's build
Experience
Forward Deployed Engineering Lead (Contract)
Summation
Mar 2025 - May 2025
Built the forward deployed engineering function and delivered AI-driven demos that unlocked new enterprise revenue.
- Defined the forward deployed engineering function, including role scope, hiring process, and candidate evaluation.
- Led technical implementation of Summation's AI-powered financial assistant for a 6-figure enterprise contract serving 20K+ employees.
- Developed a Python-based CLI with OpenAI Deep Research to generate realistic synthetic financial datasets and fully customized demo environments in under 30 minutes.
- Equipped sales with production-ready demos populated with AI-generated business insights, accelerating enterprise deal cycles.
PythonDuckDB SQLPolarsOpenAI APIReactTypeScript
Technical Co-Founder & CTO
Foundation (YC S23)
Jun 2023 - Dec 2024
Founded and scaled a YC-backed enterprise SaaS platform for homebuilders, leading product, engineering, and GTM from inception.
- Grew the company from idea to $300K+ ACV with multiple top-tier homebuilder customers.
- Hired, led, and mentored a six-person engineering team while establishing technical culture and scalable development practices.
- Architected and shipped the initial white-labeled B2B2C web and mobile platform for enterprise homebuilders.
- Delivered multiple product lines, including an all-in-one closing platform, builder–buyer chat app, and LLM-powered data ingestion and cleaning tooling.
- Scaled infrastructure and security to meet enterprise-grade performance requirements while accelerating release cadence.
TypeScriptPostgresNext.jsReactReact Native (Expo)Auth0RedisAWSNeon Serverless PostgresGitHub ActionsVercelInngestOpenAI APIDatadogSentryPagerDuty
Senior Software Engineer — Data Infrastructure
Opendoor
Aug 2016 - Jun 2023
Led Opendoor's data platform strategy and execution, powering pricing, risk, and operations through resilient infrastructure.
- Served as tech lead for Data Infrastructure, managing the Kubernetes-based platform for all Spark/ML workloads with hundreds of users and over $1M/month cloud spend.
- Designed and implemented the Go/Postgres backend that ingested live MLS data with <5 minute latency, normalizing formats and serving web/mobile via Elasticsearch, gRPC, and GraphQL APIs.
- Led architecture of the enterprise data warehouse—ETL pipelines, modeling, testing, and deployment—while migrating from Google Cloud (BigQuery, GCS) to AWS (RDS, S3, Snowflake).
- Maintained and enhanced data-serving microservices, including address standardization, geospatial datasets (PostGIS), and normalized realtor databases for partner programs.
- Partnered with program, data science, and operations teams to execute zero-downtime migrations, cut ML workflow latency and cost, and deliver validated data for new city launches.
GoPythonSQLPostgres/PostGISAirflowReactVega-LiteKubernetesDockerSparkElasticsearchGraphQLgRPCBigQueryGCSRDSS3SnowflakeConcourse CI/CDTerraformHelmMode Analytics
Data Science Intern
Over (acq. GoDaddy)
Jun 2016 - Jul 2016
Delivered data products that unlocked company-wide insights and powered intelligent user features.
- Built the first centralized, real-time KPI dashboard, scraping and normalizing Amplitude data to increase visibility into growth metrics.
- Developed the backend API for the “auto-text” feature using the Imagga recognition API and NLP libraries to recommend contextual copy to users.
PythonImagga APINLP librariesAmplitude