Ricardo Garcia

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT RICARDO GARCIA

Engineering leader and hands-on builder with a decade of experience shipping products across AdTech, PropTech, and consumer platforms. I thrive at the intersection of code, product, and people — and I\'m currently focused on building AI-native products that put LLMs at the center of real workflows.Most recently, I co-founded WeatherFreight, where I solo-built an AI-native Shopify app from scratch — including an MCP server deployed on Railway — and shipped it live to the Shopify App Store using Claude Code. Before that, as CTO at Bend, I hired and led a 4-person engineering team to scale a product from prototype to a platform handling $20M+ in collections. I built a Collections Risk AI Agent with RAG, shipped a partner integration in six weeks with Claude Code, and introduced AI-assisted tooling that doubled PR throughput across the team.At YouTube Ads (Google), I led a cross-functional developer tools team focused on accelerating developer velocity and UI quality at scale. My work spanned hands-on C++ contributions and system design to defining two-year strategic roadmaps aligned with organizational priorities. I\'m passionate about empowering engineers through better tooling, measurable productivity frameworks, and strong technical mentorship — I coached direct reports through promotions and navigated complex cross-team alignment challenges.Earlier, I served as VP of Engineering at LeaseLock, growing the company from seed stage to Series B and building engineering from 1 (me) to 23 engineers. I made product, architecture, and hiring decisions with high autonomy in a fast-moving, low-structure environment — the kind of 0→1 building I keep coming back to.Whether building from zero or optimizing at scale, I bring a product-minded approach and a belief in the compounding power of great teams, clear systems, and purposeful design. I\'m especially drawn to the opportunity of using AI to transform how organizations work from the inside out.