Systems thinker. Software developer. Founder of TechBeat.
Fort Pierce, Florida. I build the software businesses run on.
The shift
2026
Fourteen years of watching software fail left me with one rule: you pay for a mistake once. What broke gets fixed so it cannot break the same way again, and anything a person has to repeat by hand goes to a machine. People are for the work that needs judgment. Everything else, see the shirt.
The difference
The tools are real. Somebody with no technical background can describe a site to an AI on Friday and have it online by Monday. I have done it. It is fun.
Then real customers show up. The site slows down. A payment fails. A form leaks something it should not. And nobody can explain why, because nobody understood what got built. The tool cannot fix what its owner cannot describe.
I have spent fifteen years starting every day with something broken. That is the whole job when you are the one they call after it fails. Do that long enough and a broken system stops looking like a crisis and starts looking like a starting line. You also learn to see the break coming before it happens.
You cannot prompt your way into that. You have to have lived it.
15+
years as the person called in after software breaks
The order I build in
Scale
Plan for the customers you want, not the ones you have.
Performance
Fast for the tenth user and the ten thousandth.
Security
Protect the data before you collect it.
Function
Then the features, on a foundation that holds them.
Design
So it feels like one product, not a pile of parts.
The journey
Every year on this list added something I still use. The last one is where it all came together.
2012
SOE Software
Tested every core product by hand, then built the first automated regression suite so the team stopped repeating itself.
2013
SOE Software
Moved into business analysis: requirements, workflows, acceptance testing, and translating between clients and developers.
2014
VVitalz
Designed the automation strategy for an entire product line and wrote it in C# and .NET, documented so the team could own it.
2015
AAA, then Confluence
Took over scripts from fifteen previous engineers, upgraded the tooling, and rebuilt them into data-driven frameworks that verified every new release.
2019
Publix Super Markets
Load-tested enterprise applications and traced the bottlenecks. This is where scale stopped being a theory.
2019
TechBeat
Started teaching engineers automation through courses, video, and a community. It became a company I still run.
2020
ATAgileThought
Co-built a UI and API testing framework, trained teams on Agile, and ran the delivery boards that kept projects honest.
2021
Cognizant
Automated testing for healthcare systems under strict data rules, with reporting that gave leaders real evidence before a release.
The generative AI era
2022
ChatGPT
GitHub Copilot
Bolt
ReplitChatGPT launched in November 2022. I put it to work immediately: writing tests, analyzing results, then building the first agents that did the work themselves.
2024
IvoryCloud
VS Code
Cursor
Claude
PlaywrightMoved a company’s entire automation program onto a modern framework, built AI products for hiring and fraud detection, and trained two manual teams to automate.
2025
TechBeat
Claude Code
Gemini CLI
Codex
Cloudflare
Supabase
Azure AIEarned the Azure AI Engineer certification and launched AgentFoundry, Business Leaders Alliance, and Harbor Event Center: databases, payments, AI, and deployment, end to end.
Everything, together
2026
I will not call myself a developer the way people who have written code for twenty years have earned that word. What I can say is this: I now build whole platforms end to end, the database, the app, the payments, the AI, the deploy, and I build them the way a quality engineer would. Fourteen years of proving other people’s software works is the discipline under everything I ship. That is Quality Intelligence, and it is the difference between software that demos and software that survives.
Azure AI Engineer Associate
Microsoft, 2025
B.B.A., Business Administration
Eckerd College, 2016
TestComplete and ReadyAPI certification
SmartBear
Test Studio certification
Telerik
Tosca certification
Tricentis
How I work
Every project is one system. What the business needs, the data behind it, and the road it takes to reach a customer.
My job is to make those pieces fit, and then prove they hold.
I spent a career on the proving part. Now I build the whole thing.
Three brains
Claude CodeGemini CLIChatGPT CodexI do not trust one AI with anything that matters. Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI each get the work they are best at, and each one checks the others before it ships. Three opinions beat one, especially when the one is confident.
Build
TypeScript
Strict, everywhere.
Next.js
App Router on every site.
React
Server components first.
Tailwind
Design tokens, not stylesheets.
Drizzle
Typed SQL and migrations.
Node.js
Scripts, pipelines, tooling.
Python
Media and data pipelines.
.NET
A decade of C# test frameworks.
Ship
Cloudflare
Workers, D1, R2, Email, Tunnel.
Supabase
Postgres with RLS and MFA for regulated data.
PostgreSQL
Self-hosted on the home server too.
GitHub
Actions deploy every push.
Docker
Compose on the home server.
Ubuntu
TB-Server, the always-on box.
Stripe
Checkout, subscriptions, webhooks.
Resend
Transactional email.
Twilio
SMS and WhatsApp.
Test
Playwright
The framework I moved a company onto.
Selenium
Ten years of suites.
Tricentis Tosca
Certified. UI and API.
SmartBear
TestComplete and ReadyAPI, certified.
Telerik
Test Studio, certified.
JMeter
Load and performance.
Vitest
Unit tests on every project.
AI
Claude
Claude Code and the API. Brain one.
Gemini
Gemini CLI and image generation. Brain two.
OpenAI
Codex and GPT. Brain three.
Azure AI
AI Engineer Associate.
Deepgram
Live transcription in AgentFoundry.
ElevenLabs
Voice for course production.
AssemblyAI
Batch transcription.
Firecrawl
Web data for research.
fal.ai
Image and video models.
Run the business
Microsoft 365
Graph API: calendar, mail, Teams.
Slack
Client rooms and bots.
Make
Automation between everything.
Notion
Docs and planning.
Buffer
Social scheduling.
Canva
Client graphics.
OBS
Recording.
DaVinci Resolve
Editing.
Home Assistant
The studio lights, honestly.
logo.dev
Every logo on this page.
Featured work
A white-label platform for life and annuity insurance agencies and their agents.
A membership platform connecting local business owners through industry alliances.
A venue rental site with five bookable spaces and online checkout.
TechBeat
I started TechBeat in 2019 to teach engineers automation. It turned into a software company. Today TechBeat Solutions builds custom platforms for businesses that have outgrown templates, and TechBeat Daily is where people learn to build with AI.
Build
Custom websites, business platforms, and AI features for companies that deserve their own software.
techbeatsolutions.comCommunity
Videos, courses, and a community for people learning automation and AI.
techbeatdaily.comThe workshop
Every screen in this room has a job: building, testing, recording, and watching what is live. When a client’s system breaks at nine on a Friday night, this is where it gets fixed.
Turn the sound on. That is the TechBeat vibe.
The Workshop // Fort Pierce
Twenty-six seconds of the room, on a loop. It plays quietly on its own; the sound is yours to turn on.
Beyond the code
I am married to Nicole, who runs her own business and keeps me honest about what a real customer needs.
We live in Fort Pierce, on the Treasure Coast. When I am not building, I am behind a drum kit, on the water, or at church with family.
What I stand on
Not a footnote. The foundation. My faith is what carries my honesty and my integrity into every project, every conversation, and every line of code. So I am going to be as direct with you as I am with everyone else.
I am a follower of Jesus. Before any hard conversation, with a client, a teammate, or my wife, I have a conversation with God first. It is where I check my motives before I hand somebody my words. The work you see on this page comes out of that, not the other way around.
Here is what fifteen years of starting with broken taught me: the truth about a broken thing is cheapest early. So you will get straight answers from me. If your plan will not hold up at scale, I will say so before you pay for it, not after. I would rather lose a project than sell you one that falls over.
Peace is not the absence of storms, but God’s presence in the midst of the storm.
I am writing a book about this
When to walk through it. When to walk away.
It is about learning to read fear correctly. Some fear is protecting you. Some fear is keeping you stuck. Most people never learn to tell the two apart, and I spent years confusing them myself. The book is what I figured out, told through the only world I really know: fixing broken things.
In draft. Not yet published.
Questions about the book? Ask Jacob
Start with broken.
Broken is not a crisis. It is the starting line. Every system I have ever been handed was already broken somewhere, so I do not spend the first hour being surprised by it. I ask three things, in order: what broke, why did it break, and what is the shortest safe path to fixing it. Then I walk that path.
A failing system is not a disaster to me. It is Monday. The fire is where the real work is, and I have spent my whole career walking toward it.
Ready enough beats perfect.
Every product ever shipped had known issues on launch day. Waiting for perfect does not remove them. It only hides them from the people who could tell you which ones actually matter. Quality is a process, not a finish line, and the process needs real users to run.
I launch what is ready, measure what is real, and keep improving out in the open. Ready means it does the job, it cannot hurt anyone, and it can be rolled back.
Two questions.
Before any decision, I ask the first question: can this be undone? If the answer is yes, then fear is lying to you. Try it, watch what happens, and fix it if you have to. If the answer is no, the second question decides it: does this hand someone else something I cannot take back? If it does, slow down, check it twice, and get it right the first time.
Bold in the sandbox, where a mistake costs me an afternoon. Careful with people, with money, and with anything that is not mine to break.
Honesty comes with awareness.
“I was just being honest” is one of the most dangerous phrases in the language. Honesty is not a license to say whatever you think the second you think it. Words live in other people long after you have forgotten saying them, and you do not get them back.
I say the hard thing, to your face, when it needs saying. I also think about what it will do once it is out of my mouth, and I choose the version you can actually use.
Ask Jacob
This is an AI version of me. It answers from notes I wrote about my work, my story, and the book. Good for the quick questions. For the real conversation, use the form below.
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Email mejacob.putnam@techbeatsolutions.com
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