RZ VOL. IX · TULSA, OK · MMXXVI PORTFOLIO, No. 01

01 The Engineer

Ricardo
Zavala

Staff Software Engineer

Tulsa, OK

I build the systems behind the systems. Over ten years I've worked across the full stack for Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, and startups, shipping everything from real-time GIS platforms and PCI-compliant payment gateways to AI-driven underwriting pipelines. Right now I'm deep in early-stage fintech, architecting backend infrastructure from first commit. I like small teams working on hard problems.

Portrait of Ricardo Zavala, Staff Software Engineer

Selected Work.

Dealer Acquisition System preview
Acquisition systems

Dealer Acquisition System

Dealer acquisition pipeline for a commercial equipment marketplace. It qualifies dealers, normalizes listings, preserves each run, and rechecks availability.

TypeScript TypeScript PostgreSQL PostgreSQL
Enroll preview
Distributed system

Enroll

Course registration system focused on keeping seat counts correct under concurrent enrollment. It combines a Next.js UI, NestJS API, PostgreSQL locking, background waitlist jobs, and an audit trail.

Next.js Next.js Prisma Prisma PostgreSQL PostgreSQL Redis Redis MongoDB MongoDB Turborepo Turborepo
Nomadhood preview
Full-stack platform

Nomadhood

Neighborhood discovery app for remote workers. It brings location signals into one comparison view and uses preference matching to surface places with a similar feel.

Next.js Next.js React React tRPC tRPC Prisma Prisma PostgreSQL PostgreSQL MapLibre MapLibre Zod Zod Bun Bun
Blaqjaq preview
Game engine and 3D

Blaqjaq

3D blackjack with a film-noir presentation and a game engine isolated in a pure TypeScript reducer. A browser audit and 159 automated tests cover the playable experience; the production delivery path was also measured at 500 VUs with 0% request failures.

React React TypeScript TypeScript Three.js Three.js Vitest Vitest k6 k6

The Lab.

Weekend-scope builds on public data. Smaller than the plates, held to the same bar.

Civic data · Hackathon build

Emergency Lifeline Auditor

When the next disaster hits, can this county hear the warning and move?

A county-level disaster-readiness explorer built from public federal data. It brings risk indicators, a map, a table, and shareable filters into one operational view.

3,144 counties · 5 federal datasets · 6 derived metrics

Next.js Next.js React React TypeScript TypeScript TanStack TanStack Vitest Vitest

Skills, traced.

Hover a node to trace its path.

TypeScript Node.js Python Go PostgreSQL AWS .NET 8

Let's connect.