David Larrabee - Driving engineering excellence at scale through AI innovation, empowered teams, and data-driven leadership.

About

I am a technology leader with over two decades of experience building and scaling engineering organizations that deliver measurable impact. From reducing critical system errors on $1B initiatives to growing teams from 3 to 50+ engineers, I focus on driving excellence through clarity, accountability, and empowered ownership.

I am passionate about the intersection of AI, automation, and human creativity. I thrive on leading initiatives that blend intelligent systems with thoughtful engineering practices. Whether architecting event-driven platforms, shaping organizational transformation, or prototyping agentic workflows, I thrive at turning complex ideas into scalable, high-value solutions.

Outside of work, I am a builder and experimenter. From consulting for AI startups and designing creative side projects to training for the next marathon run or cycling a century ride. I believe in continuous growth, curiosity, and sharing what I learn with the broader tech community.

Experience

2023 — Present

Director of Software Engineering · National Grid

At National Grid Ventures, I led software and data engineering teams delivering high-impact digital and AI solutions that advanced the company’s modernization and sustainability goals. He architected and launched a multi-channel community engagement platform and machine learning–driven risk management tools, while guiding a billion-dollar project recovery that reduced critical error rates from 12% to under 1%. His leadership fostered a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement. His team earning National Grid’s 2024 ESG Award from DataIQ for technical excellence and social impact.

ReactTypeScriptNext.jsNode.jsSnowflakeAzureDatabricksReact Native

2022 — 2023

Senior Director of Engineering · Material Bank

At Material Bank, I quickly re-established direction and delivery cadence across multiple product lines, bringing focus and architectural rigor to a fast-growing engineering organization. Within his first weeks, he realigned a Digital Asset Management initiative to meet executive expectations and designed an event-driven warehouse strategy that centralized user activity and analytics across the platform. He also transitioned legacy, externally maintained systems to in-house CI/CD-driven ownership, strengthening technical accountability and accelerating release cycles.

JavaScriptReactPythonShopifyAWS

2018 — 2022

Director of Engineering · ezCater

At ezCater, I scaled the consumer marketplace engineering organization from a small team into a high-performance division aligned with the company’s rapid growth as the world’s largest online catering marketplace. He led initiatives that modernized architecture and improved user experience, including a centralized authentication flow across all products and the company’s first native Android application. By emphasizing data-driven decision-making, agile leadership, and technical mentorship, he delivered measurable improvements in speed, reliability, and team productivity—cementing ezCater’s technical foundation for continued expansion.

HTMLCSSJavaScriptVue.jsTailwind CSS

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Projects

Packet Inspector

I served as a founding engineer, driving the technical vision for an AI-powered product that automated immigration package validation. He built an end-to-end pipeline for document ingestion and analysis using custom extraction models and agentic workflows, improving processing accuracy and speed. His work demonstrated pragmatic innovation—rapidly delivering a proof of concept that showcased how AI and intelligent automation can streamline complex, document-heavy legal processes.

Next.jsTypeScriptSupabaseVercelTrigger.devAzureDocument intelligenceOpenAI

JobTrackr

Having a number of friends on the job market and an interest in exploring agentic code development was the catalyst for creating JobTrackr. It's a small solution for those looking to centralize their job searching efforts. Keep track of where you have applied, interviews you have had, and networking contacts with some high-level reporting to give you statistics around your job search journey.

Next.jsTypeScriptSupabaseVibe CodingVercel

Live Demo

Test Sweet

Created TestSweet, an open-source integration testing library for RubyMotion applications, enabling developers to write expressive, maintainable tests across iOS and macOS with minimal overhead. TestSweet integrates seamlessly with RSpec, Appium, and Cucumber to simplify UI-driven testing workflows, reduce boilerplate, and improve test coverage across mobile apps.

RubyRubyMotionSoftware TestingOpen Source

Code

RedPotion

Core contributor to RedPotion, a unified RubyMotion framework combining RMQ, ProMotion, and other libraries to streamline mobile app development. Helped design cohesive APIs and integrations that simplified UI, data, and networking workflows for RubyMotion developers.

RubyRubyMotionOpen Source

Code

RMQ

As a principal contributor to RMQ (RubyMotionQuery), I played a pivotal role in shaping a lightweight, chainable front-end library for RubyMotion—effectively bringing the expressive convenience of jQuery-style UI manipulation, styling, event handling, and animations to RubyMotion apps. I contributed core features, enhancements, and documentation that bolstered RMQ’s usability and robustness, helping to maintain its reputation for clean APIs and solid documentation. My work strengthened RMQ’s position as a go-to UI toolkit in the RubyMotion community.

RubyRubyMotionOpen Source

Code