One builder. No lane.
I’m Jason Ratzlaff. I’ve been writing software since 1994 — about thirty years — and leading engineering teams for the last fifteen, across more than fifteen cultures. Today I’m a Principal Engineer III at Western Alliance Bank. Parkk Technology is where I take on the work that doesn’t fit a job title: the stalled prototype, the problem three teams already gave up on, the thing nobody else wants to touch.
What I actually do
I don’t advise from the sidelines. I build — end to end, one person accountable. That means I’m as comfortable training a computer-vision model in CUDA as I am routing a PCB, hardening a banking API, or shaving seconds off a Magento storefront.
- AI & autonomous systems — models I build and train from scratch (YOLOv8, LoRA/DPO, local inference), not wrappers around someone else’s API.
- Defense hardware — founding engineer and equity partner on a fielded counter-UAS RF-detection system I took from concept through CAD, PCB, firmware, and the operator UI.
- Fintech & banking — five products launched into Westpac, Best Egg, Merrick, and E.ON Next; a 20-developer org I built and led at Phillips & Cohen.
- E-commerce — $65M+ in client revenue as Magento lead for Yamaha, Rubie’s, simplehuman, eos, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, HerRoom, and The House of Staunton.
The numbers
- $65M+ in client revenue driven
- 3 U.S. patents
- 50+ major projects shipped
- 30 years writing software; 15+ leading teams
If it can be built, I want to build it — end to end, one person accountable.