Owen Richards · Richmond, VA
I build software that gives people their afternoons back.
Full-stack engineer who ships production AI, at CoStar Group. Raised in England, now in Virginia. Hit by a car three times on my bike, still riding. You might be spotting a theme: I don't quit.
Selected work
Stuff that actually shipped.
Career
Three years at CoStar. Promoted twice.
Jul 2023 — Now
Software Engineer II
CoStar Group
- Promoted twice: Associate Software Engineer → SWE I → SWE II
- Rebuilt the AI platform around declarative agents: faster to ship new ones, 75% less code; RAG agents on Bedrock; Kafka subscriptions projected to cut downstream writes 80–90%
- Platforms reaching millions of contacts daily across 7+ marketplaces
Aug 2024 — Now
M.S. Computer Science (Machine Learning)
Georgia Institute of Technology
- Studying part-time alongside full-time engineering
Oct 2025 — Now
Side project: sole engineer
FieldDay (pre-launch)
- A platform for organizing real-world activities, built solo alongside the day job
- Payments on an append-only ledger; youth-safety and parental-consent rules enforced by the backend
- 13 backend domains kept apart by the build itself (custom ESLint rules + CI checks)
May — Sep 2022
DevOps Software Engineer Intern
nCino
- CI/CD + IaC for 30+ product teams; Datadog Lambda metrics cut cloud spend ~$100K a year
Aug 2021 — May 2023
ML Research Assistant · Teaching Assistant
University of Virginia
- Deep-learning pipelines for an NIH-funded patient-outcome platform (with Emory and Harvard)
- Head TA for Database Systems in 2022–23; supported 100+ students and deployed 10+ class projects on Google Cloud
Aug 2019 — May 2023
B.S. Computer Science, Engineering Business minor
University of Virginia · GPA 3.92
Side project
The biggest thing I've built: a participation platform, solo from zero.
A participation platform connecting people, organizations, and sponsors around real-world activities.
A single Next.js app over a Bun + tRPC API that fronts 13 domain-driven services. They import nothing from each other and talk only over an event bus. The hard guarantees live in the backend, where the UI can't undo them: trust is computed once and read everywhere, money is an append-only ledger, and youth-safety rules are enforced server-side.
It isn't live yet, on purpose. It takes payments and it will have kids on it, so the ledger and the youth-safety rules had to be right before the first user, not patched in after.
- 11 mo
- Solo, alongside a full-time job
- 13
- Backend domains, kept apart by the build
- 136
- Checks that fail the build if a rule breaks
The through-line
FieldDay is where I practice the systems side of my work: payments, safety rules and domain boundaries that hold because the build enforces them, not because I remember to. The AI side is the agent answering you over on /ask. The work I want sits in that overlap.
About
The bit where I'm meant to say I'm passionate.
I'm not going to. Anyone can type that. Here's the evidence instead: I joined CoStar as an Associate Engineer and got promoted twice in three years, while doing a machine learning master's at Georgia Tech part-time and building FieldDay solo on weekends. I just don't do half speed.
On a team, I'm the one in your corner. Credit goes to everyone else. The "dumb" question comes from me, so the new person doesn't have to ask it. And if you ship something great, I'll make sure people hear about it. Anyone can make a room quieter. I'd rather make it braver.
At work, that means the full stack and the AI parts: the model is usually the easy bit, and retrieval, evals and cost controls make it something a business can trust. If you'd rather start with questions, the agent on /ask answers them from my case studies and cites its sources.
- CurrentlySoftware Engineer II, CoStar Group
- BuildingFieldDay, a pre-launch participation platform
- StudyingMSCS (ML), Georgia Tech
- Lives inRichmond, VA. Raised in England.
- SupportsManchester United (send help)
- SoundtrackMostly musicals. I'm not sorry.
- StatusOpen to full-stack & AI engineering roles · Remote / Hybrid / Relocation
Off the clock
The stats my résumé left out.
2
Passports, one accent that won't pick
English dad, American mum. Football at home, soccer at work.
2013
Last time United won the league
I still check the table every week. Hope is free.
5
Ways I get outside
Surf, kite, swim, run, ride. Mostly in that order of chaos.
1
House I'm fixing up
Nothing in it is square. The previous owner left zero comments.
Ask me about · 1 of 9
Kitesurfing looks easy from the beach. It is not. What's the last thing you tried that looked easy from the sidelines?
Your phone is not your friend. Your tools should be.
Most apps are built to keep you scrolling. I want to build the opposite: software that handles the busywork in seconds and then shoves you back out the door. To the trail, the pitch, the fire, your people. Mine shoves me toward the sea.
The long versionFull disclosure
The fine print.
Your Spotify will be compromised.
Show tunes are contagious. Give it two weeks and you'll be humming Hugh Jackman in code review.
Match days.
I'm reachable during United games. Emotionally available is a different SLA.
When the wind's up, part of me is at the beach.
I'll still ship. I'll just ship while checking the forecast.
I will ask "why?" a lot.
Usually about the thing everyone stopped questioning in 2021. Mostly it's useful. Sometimes it's annoying. I'll take that ratio.
Still here? Brilliant. Let’s build something that gives people their afternoons back.
Say hello