Patrick Hughes
dell dimension e310 — me, age 12 · 2008> upgrading hdd ................ ok> installing ubuntu 6.06 ....... FAILED> bricked. mom was not thrilled.> 20 years later: still taking things apart

I find where people get stuck, then build the thing that unsticks them.

Kid from Queens, Jamaican parents, now a husband and first-time dad. Still building and taking things apart.

Three tracks, 2012 to now

I've been building and teaching in parallel since I was fifteen, and getting people into rooms for about as long.

Build

Brick by brick.

  1. 2014

    Programmer

    CodeNow

    Senior year of high school. The actual answer to how I got into this.

  2. 2014–2017

    Operations Assistant

    Student Activities Center

    Served over 350 campus clubs.

  3. 2015

    IT Infrastructure & Architecture Intern

    Pratt & Whitney

    Infrastructure analysis on ~100 servers for a datacenter relocation.

  4. 2016–2018

    Technology Intern, Web Development

    Stony Brook — Marketing & Communication

    100+ sites, 3 published. Then training videos, and the YouTube channel to put them on.

  5. 2016

    Software Test & QA Intern

    EMC

    Functional testing of EMC.com — 30+ defects found and corrected.

  6. 2016

    IT QA Intern

    Dell Technologies

    Kept on part-time after the merger.

  7. 2017

    Analytics Intern

    Carbon Black

    QlikSense dashboards, ETL, data modeling.

  8. 2018–2019

    Cloud Technical Resident

    Google

    Three rotations: support, technical account management, sales engineering.

  9. 2019–2022

    Solution Engineer

    Google

    Prototypes, workshops, and discovery for enterprise cloud.

  10. 2022–2024

    Sr. Solutions Architect

    Coinbase

    API solution design for 50+ customers across Commerce, Pay, and Onramp.

  11. 2024–2026

    Sr. Developer Advocate

    Base — Coinbase

    Docs, demos, workshops, and launch support for Base App.

  12. 2026–now

    Solutions Architect, Field Engineering

    Vercel

Teach

Helping others achieve their best.

  1. 2012–2014

    Teens P.A.C.T. Peer Leader

    Community Healthcare Network

    30+ workshops across New York City. I wrote the PSA scripts. I was fifteen.

  2. 2014–2015

    Programming Chair

    NSBE

    Events for 50+ people.

  3. 2015–2016

    Vice President

    NSBE

  4. 2015–2016

    Resident Assistant

    Stony Brook

  5. 2018

    TA — ISE 312

    Stony Brook

    Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing.

  6. 2026–now

    Founder

    atxworkshops.com

    Small-group workshops, in Austin, in person.

Access

Getting more people into the room.

  1. 2014–2018

    Student

    Educational Opportunity Program

    Five weeks early for summer classes, and counselors who stayed four years.

  2. 2018

    Success Coach

    Educational Opportunity Program

    Mentored three students of my own, and all three improved.

  3. 2022–now

    Limited Partner / Angel Investor

    BAG Ventures

    Early-stage, mostly AI and infrastructure.

  4. 2026–now

    Founder

    blackbitcoiner.com

    Built to help Black folks build wealth through bitcoin accumulation.

Things I've built

Five I'd defend in a room full of engineers.

The receipts, on the resume

Recently

I joined Vercel's Field Engineering team as a Solutions Architect. I'm here to learn, and to help customers build things that advance the web.

I also started two things in 2026: atxworkshops.com in June, for small-group workshops here in Austin, and blackbitcoiner.com in September, to help Black folks build wealth through bitcoin. I've been a limited partner at BAG Ventures since 2022. Personal finance is the subject I've thought hardest about for the longest.

The longer version