Bio

Hi, I'm Jack. I grew up between San Francisco and Marin County, played a lot of sports, and was always the technical kid — even though I didn't actually start programming until college. I studied computer science at the University of Oregon, and that's where I really dove in.

School is where I got my hands dirty. I worked as a network engineer — okay, a “wire monkey” — wrangling routers for dorm rooms and helping out the campus network team, and I spent time in a research lab turning kids' learning books into iPad apps. On my own time I chased two obsessions: JavaScript web apps and embedded systems. I came up right as Backbone.js and the first single-page apps landed, and got to watch that whole world evolve into React. In parallel I was deep in a microprocessors lab, wiring Arduinos up to phones — my senior project was an autonomous dog feeder run by a camera, an Arduino, and a pile of other parts.

Oregon also gave me skiing. I joined the U of O ski club and fell hard for Mt. Bachelor — still some of my favorite days are up there in the snow.

After school I spent a year in Portland at Salesforce, where my career really took shape: I started as a software engineer, moved into solutions engineering, and landed as a pre-sales technical architect — all told, more than seven years there. From there I went out on my own, building real solutions with customers under my own company, then jumped into a couple of startups. These days I'm a Sr. GTM Systems Developer at LaunchDarkly. Through all of it I've kept two threads going: a love of building and constantly learning new tech, and a love of storytelling — taking something technical and making it land for whoever's in the room.

Outside of work, my main job is Morty — my four-year-old golden retriever and certified baby. I raised him in the Marina, so he's happiest swimming at Crissy Field and is completely, hopelessly obsessed with the ball. Very good boy, shockingly obedient. When I'm not on dog duty, you'll usually find me surfing at Ocean Beach, on a bike (mountain, and lately a lot of road), or out on the golf course.

This site is one of a few things I'm building right now, alongside poutyboi.com and a small consulting practice at platformtrailblazers.com. My code lives at github.com/jziesing.

The full professional rundown — roles, certifications, the things companies care about — is on the Resume tab. If you'd rather just say hi, the Contact tab works.