01About
I've spent nearly 30 years building high-performance web applications, including for FORTUNE 500 companies like Costco, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Abbott Laboratories. I'm a ColdFusion subject matter expert, a rarer skill every year, and my specialty is the part most people never see: server architecture, scalability, and performance tuning. I sharpened those instincts through direct training and field experience while working for Allaire, Macromedia, and Adobe.
I'm not a one-platform engineer, though. I design solid back-end databases, build front ends people find intuitive, and tune whole systems end to end. As a consultant, I turned several short-term contracts into multi-year partnerships by delivering and earning trust. Whether I'm leading a development team, architecting an enterprise solution, or presenting to the C-suite, my job is the same: bridge the technical and business sides so the right thing gets built.
Since 2016 I've been a Senior Web Application Engineer at Quality Logo Products, keeping our e-commerce and CRM systems running their best. There I designed the double-entry accounting system that moved our accounting department off QuickBooks, and a sales-commission engine that turned a week of monthly spreadsheet work into a report that builds itself every day.
Lately I've been adding AI engineering to the toolkit: building with AI coding agents, LLM tooling, and Cursor cloud agents, and bringing the same architectural discipline to making them dependable.
B-side Before software took over, I studied Music Performance/Education and Computer Science at Illinois State University (1993–1995). I still play and sing in bands, and it shows up in how I work: listen first, keep time, and leave space for everyone else to be heard.
B-side Off the clock, I spent three seasons (13U 2023–24 through 15U 2025–26) as volunteer treasurer for the Thunder travel baseball team — roughly $30,000 a season in tournament and umpire fees, fundraising, uniforms, and training. The same spreadsheet instinct applied: I rebuilt the inherited Google Sheet with check-posted tracking, balancing, payment status, and automated fee calculations, and returned the leftover surplus to the families when the team wrapped up.
02Now Building
- agents building with AI coding agents day to day, from planning a change to reviewing what they ship
- cloud running Cursor cloud agents on real repos, with every change landing as a pull request I review
- tooling learning what LLM tooling needs to be dependable: context, guardrails, and a human in the loop
- craft applying 30 years of architecture and performance habits to AI-assisted development
03Experience
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Senior Web Application Engineer · Quality Logo Products
Aurora, IL · Hybrid
Business analysis, design, and development for mission-critical back-end tools that integrate with QLP's custom CRM, keeping the e-commerce and CRM systems running their best. Designed the double-entry accounting system that moved the accounting department off QuickBooks, and the engine that computes commissions for a 70-person sales team.
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ColdFusion Expert · Independent Consultant
Freelance
Subject matter expert in ColdFusion and web/database application design, development, and implementation. Contributing author and conference speaker on ColdFusion architecture, best practices, application throughput, performance engineering, bottleneck analysis, and platform scalability.
Clients I have assisted include:
- Thermo Fisher Scientific / Pierce Antibodies
- Costco Wholesale Corporation
- Abbott Laboratories
- AT&T
- YouTube
- Reebok
- Discovery Communications
- Footlocker
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Team/Project Manager & Senior Programmer · Drafthorse Solutions, LLC
Led business analysis and implementation planning, coordinated engineering and QA, and shipped features and performance work on a ColdFusion + SQL Server retail/photo production suite used by retailers including Target, Walmart, eBay, Adidas, and Puma. Led hiring and introduced Slack, JIRA, Confluence, and Git.
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Consulting Lead Web Architect · Thermo Fisher Scientific
Greater Rockford Area
Owned the entire e-commerce web presence and back-end administration for the Pierce Antibodies division, reporting to the Commercial Director of Operations and the Business Development Director. Integrated with legacy ERP and CRM systems and used Amazon S3 and CloudFront for global content delivery, faster perceived page loads, and SEO.
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Principal Consultant / Performance Engineer · Webapper Services, LLC
Helped clients scale large enterprise ColdFusion applications through hardware architecture review, application and database bottleneck analysis, and hands-on development.
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Technical Lead · Wireless Advocates
One of two consulting technical leads on a large-scale e-commerce platform for Costco's cellular phone and wireless plan business, built on a ColdFusion MVC framework of my own design with a SQL Server data warehouse, catalog processing, and a clustered, fault-tolerant production environment. Launched March 22, 2010.
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Lead Technical Architect · Discovery Communications
Lead technical architect and developer for unitedstreaming, a large educational video streaming service acquired by Discovery Communications in 2004, responsible for its technical upkeep and advancement.
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Senior Consultant · Allaire
Mentored client teams and helped design complex ColdFusion/Spectra applications while leading development and keeping the client's needs front and center.
04Selected Work
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Quality Logo Products
Custom double-entry accounting system
Designed and built the highly automated, double-entry accounting system that migrated QLP's accounting department off QuickBooks. It now handles the company's most mission-critical accounts receivable and accounts payable functions.
QuickBooks → a custom, automated AR/AP platform
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Quality Logo Products
Automated sales-commission engine
Replaced a home-grown Excel workbook that a group of accounting team members spent about a week on every month. The system analyzes ~15,000 customer orders a month to compute commissions (paychecks) for a 70-person sales team, and generates a fresh report automatically every day.
~1 week of manual work each month → a daily report in minutes
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Wireless Advocates · for Costco
Costco wireless e-commerce platform
Co-led the design and build of a large-scale e-commerce platform for Costco's cellular phone and wireless plan business: a ColdFusion MVC framework of my own design, an extensive SQL Server data warehouse and catalog processing system, and a clustered, fault-tolerant production environment.
Launched March 22, 2010 · ~50 orders/day · on track for ~$100K in sales in its first 4 weeks
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Thermo Fisher Scientific
Pierce Antibodies e-commerce presence
Ran the entire e-commerce site and back-end admin interfaces for the Pierce Antibodies division, integrating with legacy ERP and CRM systems and using Amazon S3 and CloudFront for global content distribution, faster perceived page loads, and SEO.
Four-plus years as lead web architect
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Independent
Speaking & writing on ColdFusion performance
Contributing author and conference speaker on numerous occasions, focused on ColdFusion architectures, design and development best practices, application throughput, performance engineering, bottleneck analysis, and platform scalability.
05Kind Words
Verbatim excerpts from LinkedIn recommendations, letters of recommendation, and a review of one of my conference talks. Linked names open the full LinkedIn recommendation.
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His skills in ColdFusion programming are the best I have ever encountered.
Fred Salchli CTO, duoDesign Letter, 2001, Tyson reported to him -
Tyson's the complete package. He'll dive deep into the most complex technical problems at hand, or, he'll hold court in the boardroom contributing to strategic decisions.
Patrick Quinn (read the full recommendation on LinkedIn, opens in new tab) Co-Founder @ Webapper LinkedIn, 2013, Managed Tyson directly -
This role required our Consultants to not only provide a strong technical solution, but also to demonstrate well developed Customer Service and Communication skills. Tyson excelled in this role.
Kip Bowes VP, Worldwide Professional Services, Allaire / Macromedia Letter, 2002, Led the services organization Tyson worked in -
…in my years of experience, Tyson ranks in my "Top 5" designer/developer professionals list.
Doug Salcedo Sr. IT Consultant, Strong-Bridge LLC Letter, 2010, Program/Project Manager, Costco e-commerce build -
…Tyson impressed me with his solid knowledge of ColdFusion, databases, Windows NT, and Internet technologies.
Grant Szabo Director, Worldwide Professional Services, Allaire / Macromedia Letter, 2002, Led Tyson's consulting team -
Beyond the breadth of his technical expertise, what distinguishes Tyson apart from other developers is that he is a superior communicator and excellent mentor.
Steven Erat (read the full recommendation on LinkedIn, opens in new tab) Quality Engineering Leader | Automated Testing Specialist | Former Adobe (Retired) LinkedIn, 2013, Worked with Tyson on the same team -
He was more than happy to offer impromptu tech discussions to explore a particular facet of programming that none of the rest of us had ever dealt with before…
Kelly Tetterton Technical Lead, duoDesign Letter, 2001, Fellow Technical Lead -
With the grace of a seasoned speaker and the confidence of a true expert, he explained the definition and goals of caching within an application…
Doug Boude On Tyson's CFUNITED 2007 session on caching Talk review, 2007, Conference attendee -
He is consistently willing to be the hardest working team member while at the same time the most brilliant.
Brett Miller (read the full recommendation on LinkedIn, opens in new tab) Award Winning App & Website Developer LinkedIn, 2010, Tyson's client
06Toolbox
56 skills and technologies from three decades of work. Hover or focus a star to see how they connect.
Architecture & performance
- Application Architecture
- MVC
- Web Services
- Scalability
- Bottleneck Analysis
- Server Tuning
- Clustering
- Load Balancing
Languages & front end
- ColdFusion
- JavaScript
- Vue.js
- jQuery
- AJAX
- HTML
- CSS
- XML
- Java
- Flex
- Hibernate
- Fusebox
Data
- MySQL
- Microsoft SQL Server
- SQL
- T-SQL
- Oracle
- Database Design
- Database Administration
- Databases
- SQL Server Replication
- ERwin
Infrastructure & cloud
- Apache
- Tomcat
- IIS (Internet Information Services)
- Windows Server
- UNIX / Linux
- Amazon EC2
- Amazon ELB
- Amazon S3
- Amazon CloudFront
Leadership & delivery
- Leadership
- Team Management
- Budget Management / Team Treasurer
- Software Project Management
- Agile Methodologies
- SDLC
- Software Development
- Web Development
- Web Applications
- Subversion
- Git
- JIRA
- Confluence
- SEO
- Google Analytics
AI engineering
- AI coding agents
- LLM tooling
- Cursor cloud agents