About

I'm Chris, a Staff Software Engineer at Rula based in Cary, NC. I've spent the better part of my career building with Laravel and PHP, and I still genuinely enjoy it. My day-to-day involves backend architecture, developer tooling, and figuring out how AI can fit into real engineering workflows without the hype.

Outside of work, I co-host the Slightly Caffeinated podcast with TJ Miller, where we talk about web development, AI tools, open source, and whatever else comes up over coffee. I also write Dev Notes, a weekly newsletter covering AI tools, Laravel, and developer workflows that goes out every Friday morning. On the open source side, I've maintained packages like Laravel Messenger and PHP Insights, and I co-organized TrianglePHP in Raleigh for several years. When I'm not at a keyboard, I'm usually grilling something, spending time with my family, or trying a new bag of coffee beans.