hi, i'm tara

I build
delightful & useful
things.

Engineering manager at Gusto. Independent builder of a layoff calculator, a jiu-jitsu app, a road-mapping model for humanitarian work, and a tap-and-knock game for my kids. And yes, I'm taking contract work.

Tara Bird
▶ NOW SHIPPING gusto pro workflows & integrations★rolling at north south jiu jitsu★waiting for the caterpillars to hatch★deep in the dungeon crawler carl series★▶ NOW SHIPPING gusto pro workflows & integrations★rolling at north south jiu jitsu★waiting for the caterpillars to hatch★deep in the dungeon crawler carl series★
01 / builds

Things I've shipped lately.

currently shipping · 2026
Screenshot of fair-roads
PROPOSAL SUBMITTED
Sept 2026 · proposal submitted

fair-roads

Volunteers map roads by hand where no usable map exists. This model does the first pass, and the interesting part is what measuring it honestly changed.

DINOv2 ViT-S/14 UPerNet ONNX
Screenshot of Layoff Calculator
LIVE
2026 → ongoing

Layoff Calculator

A free, source-cited tool that grades severance offers and estimates runway in sixty seconds.

Next.js TypeScript Supabase
Screenshot of Rollcall
LIVE
2026 → ongoing

Rollcall

A training log and community for jiu-jitsu practitioners. Tracks belts, drills, and the people you roll with.

Next.js Supabase Playwright
Screenshot of Knock It Off
FOR THE KIDS
2026 · live

Knock It Off

A tap-and-knock game where a cat shoves food off the counter to a hungry dog. Built in Godot, mostly for my kids.

Godot 4.6 GDScript
02 / what i do

What you can hire me for.

taking on work · 2026
  • 01

    Ship the whole product, model included.

    Idea to shipped thing, solo. Design, build, deploy, the unglamorous parts after launch — and when the product is a model, train, evaluate and export that too.

    products shipped, built alone
    4
    Next.js Supabase PyTorch ONNX Godot
  • 02

    Make systems talk.

    Partner APIs, accounting platforms, sync pipelines that fail quietly until someone makes them stop.

    sync errors · teams I led
    15% → 7%
    QuickBooks Xero Sage Intacct
  • 03

    Run the engineering team.

    Fractional tech leadership. On-call rotations, ops reviews, calibration — the infrastructure that makes leadership scale.

    time-to-resolve · teams I led
    20 days → 9
    2 teams 5 engineers
  • 04

    Get a team productive with new tools.

    AI tooling adoption, workshops, and teaching people who have never written a line of code.

    PR throughput · 2-team sprint, DX-confirmed
    58%
    AI tooling Workshops AI certificate
03 / career

How I got here .

In middle school, my friend taught me to edit Neopets pages with HTML at a sleepover. That was it. I was hooked on shaping the web by hand. I studied advertising at CU Boulder (with a tech-and-media minor), spent my early career in a customer-support seat at a startup called Kapost, attended Women Who Code meetups with friends, and finally bet on a thirteen-week bootcamp called Fullstack Academy when bootcamps still felt like a risk…

04 / off-keyboard

Useful shit, not software.

Heart & Hammer

501(c)(3) · 2012 → today

A nonprofit my family started for community partnerships and humanitarian giving across NY, NJ, FL, and the Philippines.

5,000+
care packages
13 yrs
continuous
4
regions served

Kinetic Minds

kid-coding pilot · 2025 → 2026

A creative-coding program for K–5 students in Montclair. Started with a community fundraiser.

$3,750
seed raised
30%
sponsored seats
6 mo
ran
05 / off the clock

Outside the IDE.

Jiu-jitsu.

White belt, a year in. I eat my own dog food by tracking every roll on Rollcall.

Gardening.

Slowly turning the yard into something the kids can dig in.

Caterpillar habitats.

Backyard butterfly releases with the three short people I share a roof with.

Snowboarding & hiking.

CU Boulder ruined me forever (in a good way).

06 / say hi

Drop a line .

Yes I take contract work — shipping a product end to end, wiring up integrations, running your engineering team, or getting the team you have moving faster. Tell me what you're building.