South Bay, San Diego — Toolmaker

Andrew Meraz builds
small, sharp tools.

Self-taught full-stack developer with a day job in enterprise software licensing and a growing shop of single-purpose apps built to solve real problems — now building toward a full-time engineering role.

20+tools shipped
2domains self-hosted
PHP · JS · AWScore stack
AM
Bio

From licensing spreadsheets to production code.

Andrew works in enterprise software licensing for a university IT organization by day, and spends his off-hours doing the thing most people only talk about: shipping real software. What started as internal tools to fix his own team's workflow — a mail-merge generator here, a draft organizer there — has grown into a self-hosted library of dependable, dependency-free web apps.

He runs a full AWS Lightsail stack from scratch (Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, SSL, Git deploys) and builds everything from the ground up in PHP, MySQL, and vanilla JavaScript, with React and Python currently in progress. No frameworks he doesn't understand, no black boxes — just tools that work, built one clear problem at a time.

Based in the South Bay area of San Diego. Currently aiming his growing skillset at a full-time move into software engineering — solo builder and internal-tools roles especially welcome.

Self-taught Server admin Ships weekly Career-transitioning
Stack

What's on the pegboard

Languages

  • PHP
  • JavaScript (vanilla)
  • SQL / MySQL
  • Python (emerging)

Infrastructure

  • AWS Lightsail
  • Apache / MariaDB
  • Git & GitHub
  • SSL / Certbot

In progress

  • React
  • File System Access API
  • Electron / Tauri
  • Auth architecture (SaaS)

Working style

  • Single-file, no dependencies
  • Manual deploys over CI/CD
  • Dark UI, localStorage-first
  • Build-and-refine iteration
Portfolio

The toolshed

Résumé

Want the full history?

The résumé covers the licensing role, the self-taught engineering track, and the tools above in reverse-chronological detail — swap in your current file below.

View résumé →
20+Tools shipped
2Sites hosted
PHP/JSCore stack
AWSInfra managed solo
Contact

Get in touch