Fireworks over Donner Lake at dusk

Jeff Fenchel

Software Engineer · AI Agent Builder

Jeff Fenchel on a sunset trail run above Donner Lake

Hi, I'm Jeff.

I'm a software engineer and AI leader based in the Sierra Nevada. I build data platforms, ML pipelines, AI agents, and the infrastructure that lets teams ship faster. Lately I spend a lot of time helping engineering organizations rewire how they work — not just adopting AI tools, but rethinking the full development loop.

Outside of work, I'm usually outdoors — hydrofoiling on Tahoe, skiing, trail running, or disappearing into the Sierra backcountry.

10+ Years Engineering
7,000' Home Elevation
Lines of Lake

Outside

Hydrofoiling on Lake Tahoe

Hydrofoiling

E-foiling on Tahoe

Skiing in the Sierra

Skiing

Tahoe area resorts

Backcountry hiking in the snow

Backcountry

Year-round in the Sierra

Hiking at an alpine lake

Alpine Lakes

Sierra backcountry

Above Lake Tahoe on granite

Trail Running

Above Tahoe

Winter mountain reflection on still water

Winter Stillness

Donner Lake in winter

Fireworks over Donner Lake
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
— John Muir

What I build & lead

Data Platforms

Streaming pipelines, batch processing, and the orchestration layers that connect them.

Platform Engineering

CI/CD systems, infrastructure as code, and internal developer tooling.

Distributed Systems

Event-driven services, message buses, and systems that need to scale reliably.

Data Engineering

Ingestion, transformation, data quality, and getting datasets ready for analytics.

Machine Learning

Training pipelines, model optimization, and deploying inference to production.

Home Automation

Smart home systems with local LLM integration, voice pipelines, and GPU-accelerated inference.

AI Agents

Building autonomous agents with tool use, memory, and multi-step reasoning. Production deployments with Claude, LangChain, and LangGraph — wired into real systems, not just demos.

Engineering Leadership

Leading high-impact product teams from 0-to-1 and at scale. Setting technical direction, building cultures of ownership and velocity, and driving outcomes — not just managing headcount.

AI-Forward Transformation

Helping engineering organizations rewire how they work — identifying high-leverage AI adoption points, upskilling teams, and building the culture and tooling that make AI a genuine force multiplier.

Technologies I work with

Python Go PyTorch TensorFlow ONNX SageMaker Kubernetes Apache Kafka Apache Airflow Spark Terraform Docker AWS PostgreSQL React CI/CD Flink dbt MLflow scikit-learn XGBoost Claude LangChain LangGraph AI Agents LLMs Ollama OpenAI RAG MCP

Let's talk

Building something interesting? Thinking through an AI transformation or engineering challenge? I'm always up for a good conversation.