I’ve been coding since I was a kid and never stopped. Here’s a timeline of the projects and roles where I got to write code or be deeply technical.
2026 Viaggero
A travel app. More details coming soon.
2026 Lets Get Coffee
An iOS and macOS app that helps travelers answer the question: “Who do I know in [city]?”
Lets Get Coffee imports your contacts from Apple Contacts and LinkedIn, geocodes their locations, and lets you search by city — so when you’re heading somewhere new, you can quickly find friends, colleagues, and connections who live there and set something up.
Future versions will add proactive notifications: if you and a coffee buddy are both in each other’s home city (or nearby), the app will give you a heads-up so you can make plans before the moment passes.
All data stays on-device. Privacy first.
2014–2025 Coding with Kids
While I was an executive at Amazon, Grab, MongoDB, and dbt Labs, I really didn’t have time to do any coding. So I scratched that itch by doing limited coding in Python, Arduino C, Raspberry Pi, and other similar languages.
2011–2013 Airset
While enjoying the good life in Italy, I couldn’t stop myself from working, so I connected with a small team of brilliant software and design engineers to produce a top-notch cloud-based productivity application for companies, groups and families.
2001–2011 Castle AV Consulting
Castle AV designs, installs and services high-end home automation systems in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As the owner, Mark built the business from nothing to a $1M/year going concern in 7 years. Mark is involved in all areas of the business including sales, design, project management and installation.
1993–2000 Oracle Video Server
As one of four founders of Oracle’s Media Server Group, helped architect, design and implement the first version of the Oracle Media Server. Responsible for patents around the scalable delivery of MPEG video on interactive broadband networks. Later managed the Video Server development team (up to 45 engineers), the Video Server Division, and ultimately the Interactive Television Division (up to 100 employees, $10M+ budget), reporting directly to the CEO.
1988–1993 Oracle Database
Primary developer on the Oracle RDBMS portable operating system layer — approx 100K lines of portable C code. During this time, Mark contributed to Oracle Database Kernel versions V5.1.22, V6.0, V6.2 (the precursor to Real Application Clusters), and V7.0. Responsible for the VAX/VMS port including VAX/VMS internals, data structures, and kernel mode device driver programming. Focused on debugging and performance tools to help analyze upper layers of the RDBMS code, including portable interprocess debugging and modifying the GNU C compiler to support basic-block profiling on the VAX/VMS platform. Later managed the team responsible for Oracle’s portable operating system layer and served as Chair of the RDBMS Porting Council, negotiating with hardware and software vendors to implement key features for enhanced performance and robustness of the Oracle RDBMS.
1986–1988 NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Extensive VAX/VMS systems programming including locks, shared memory, mailboxes, hardware control (serial, parallel, relay), and real-time graphics display. Built lab management software to monitor and control experiments on high-vacuum chip creation and analysis facilities.
1985 Colorado School of Mines
I took my sophomore year off from Caltech to move to Golden Colorado and attend the Colorado School of Mines. Because I wasn’t going for a degree (I was returning to Caltech) I was able to take advanced courses. In one of them, I wrote a planetary exploration program called ‘Starfall’ in Turbo Pascal, one of the best coding environments ever developed. It was over 100K lines of code, written in 4 months (without AI, mind you…) and I got my first chance to work with a team of 4 - a project manager, a documentation person, and a designer. It was an amazing time to build an end-to-end product and understand the value of teamwork alongside techwork.
1984–1985 U.S. Department of Education — Alaska Native Education
As the sole programmer on a DOE contract, worked alongside professors and language specialists to build a CAI course authoring system in Apple Pascal supporting instructor-designed character sets. Used the system to enter a certified accounting course in Eskimo Inuit. The system and course were contracted by the U.S. Department of Education for use by Alaska Natives in remote villages throughout the Northern Slope of Alaska.