Ship the Ugly Personal Site
Waiting until my personal site was “good enough” meant I never built one. A template I made for a mentee is why I’d now tell you to ship the plain version first.
I build products by getting close to the work.
I'm Rareș, an engineer and founder in New York. After studying mechatronics at Waterloo, I spent much of the next decade in the Bay Area, working across Model 3 firmware, payments at Uber, FDA-cleared blood testing, healthcare operations, and AI products. Most recently, I co-founded Contour and built its products through its acquisition by Commure. I'm at my best with customers and operators: understanding what needs to be done, finding the cleanest way to do it, and staying technical enough to ship an answer I'm proud of.
What I paste into a fresh Claude or Codex session
Behavior rules, a Claude-plus-Codex review loop, a generate-and-cut method, and a rubric for good UI: four short files with one-click copy, so you can skip the token tax of gstack.
Should You Turn the AC Off While Away?
Startup current is the wrong target; compare heat leaking in while you are away with the time and energy to cool back down.
A better way to move files over MCP
MCP calls make the model recite the whole payload token by token. A small CLI lets code move it, so it never enters context in the first place. Fewer tokens, less time.
Work
- Company
- Contour
- Role
- Co-Founder & CTO
- Date
- Description
- Co-founded Contour and led engineering through both product chapters, up to the company’s acquisition by Commure.
- Company
- Assort Health
- Role
- Founding Engineer
- Date
- Description
- Built backend core and Epic EHR integrations for AI healthcare platform (now valued at $1.2B).
- Company
- Athelas
- Role
- Sr. Software Engineer
- Date
- Description
- Led development of the first FDA-cleared at-home CBC, plus RPM tools and billing/reconciliation.
- Company
- Uber
- Role
- Software Engineer II
- Date
- Description
- Built real-time fraud detection and payment systems processing millions of transactions daily.
- Company
- Level Home
- Role
- Firmware Engineer
- Date
- Description
- Achieved 1+ year battery life for smart deadbolt through ultra-low power optimization.
- Company
- Tesla
- Role
- Systems Integration
- Date
- Description
- Developed firmware for Model 3 security systems. Built testing infrastructure for production ramp.
- Company
- FleetCarma (Geotab)
- Role
- Embedded Developer
- Date
- Description
- Reduced GPS fix time from 27s to <4s for EV fleet telemetry devices.