One principal. Ten years of shipped work.

Ten years across architecture, hardware, firmware, and cloud.

Phil's career has been a long arc through senior engineering roles: system architecture, embedded firmware on real silicon, full-stack delivery, and cloud platforms. The studio exists because the same playbook now runs faster with frontier models alongside; one principal can credibly own scopes that used to need three.

• P1
  Architecture and AI leverage (current).

  LaFayette Labs LLC, 2026 to present. Founder and principal engineer. Building the Panakoes wearable hardware and cloud platform; running selective consulting engagements for AI-leveraged engineering, hardware/firmware, and fractional advisory.

• P2
  Senior software engineering (W-2, current).

  Windy City Wire, 11/2024 to present (concurrent with LaFayette Labs). One-person dev team operating with custom Claude Code orchestration. Shipped NavTrack, a real-time delivery management platform (SvelteKit, TypeScript, SQLite, Google Maps, AD auth, 2FA) as a six-month solo MVP, containerized on Linux Ubuntu Server with Caddy and Let's Encrypt. Built Savvy-Next, an enterprise LMS on SvelteKit, Better-Auth, and Supabase with ADP SSO and row-level security. Plus TrackerAPI (ASP.NET Core cross-database integration) and an automated invoice extraction pipeline (Power Automate, Power Apps, LLM-trained extractor, Rubicon ERP).

• P3
  Application engineering.

  OMRON Corporation, 04/2022 to 04/2024. Technical liaison and on-site engineering at Apple, Intel, IBM, SpaceX, Tesla, and other major technology and defense manufacturers for AOI/AXI inspection systems. Developed MES software (Python, MySQL) deployed at Hughes Network Systems. Built X-Ray inspection automation (Python, C++, C#) that cut manual processing time by 50%.

• P4
  Embedded systems and technical leadership.

  MH Electric Motor & Control, 04/2015 to 04/2022 (promoted from R&D Engineer to Lead Solutions Architect). Built and led an 8-person engineering team as player-coach, shipping a full industrial-electronics product line from the ground up. Spearheaded the Conscious data-analytics platform (CouchDB, Express, Angular, Node) aggregating 1,000+ wireless IIoT sensor nodes over MQTT. Embedded firmware on ARM Cortex M4F custom PCBs. Patent-filed inventor: US20200235608A1, IIoT energy-harvesting sensor network architecture.

Production code, working silicon, sober advice.

Three practices, all run by the same engineer: AI-leveraged engineering for teams that need senior throughput, hardware and firmware for groups taking a device from schematic to shipping units, and fractional advisory and diligence for founders and investors who want a senior voice in the room without the full hire.

The methodology is documented at /ai-workflow; the active project is documented at /work; the practices are detailed at /services.