Josiah
Turnquist

A technical project manager who ships the code too, equally at home in a stakeholder room and a merge conflict.

Current position
Technical Project Manager
Target position
Product Manager
Location
San Diego, California

The stack I reach for

  • Claude Cowork
  • Figma
  • Jira
  • Notion
  • Google Analytics 4
  • Claude Code
  • TypeScript
  • React & Next.js
  • React Native / Expo
  • Neon Postgres
  • Railway
  • AWS

01Selected work

Things I have actually shipped.

Most of these are live right now. Click through and use them. A few are mobile apps still in development, which is noted where it applies.

Live2025–present

Church Table

Church management: scheduling, ministries, events, boards, budgets, people.

The centre of a four-product suite, shipping as both a native mobile app and a web app. Built as a monorepo: an Expo/React Native client, a React + Vite web client and marketing site, and one unified Express + ts-rest API on Railway over Neon Postgres. The interesting constraint was making a single typed API serve four very different clients without the schema turning to mud.

Solo · architecture, API, mobile, web, infrastructure

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • TypeScript
  • Vite
  • Express
  • ts-rest
  • Neon Postgres
  • Railway
Live2026

Church Lectern

A sermon writing app with an AI council of theologians reading over your shoulder.

A Notion-style editor for preachers, with a live council (Augustine, Lewis, Spurgeon, Calvin, Bonhoeffer) generating structured suggestions anchored to specific passages in the draft. Sermon "intent" tagging changes how the council critiques, so a pastoral message is judged as one rather than as failed expository preaching. Includes a scripture reader that inserts verses at the cursor, hover popovers on detected references, and an embedded Church Atlas timeline. Commercial product with free and paid tiers through Stripe.

Solo · product, editor, AI council, billing

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • TipTap
  • Tailwind
  • Stripe
  • Neon Postgres
  • Railway
Live2026

Realms of Eldermyr

An online-only, server-authoritative multiplayer action-RPG.

One shared 347×291-tile realm in concentric difficulty rings, from a safe home Vale out to a lethal Frontier. Every sprite, sound effect, and piece of music is generated in code; there are no art assets anywhere in the project. The single-player simulation compiles to one artifact that the server loads headlessly and orchestrates for every connected player, so client and server run provably identical logic.

Solo · engine, netcode, procedural art and audio

  • TypeScript
  • WebSockets
  • Postgres
  • Railway
  • Procedural generation
Live2026

Roonscep

A lovingly dumbed-down RuneScape tribute that runs in the browser.

A 240×144-tile low-poly world in three.js with an angled camera, click-to-walk pathfinding, and eleven hand-built regions: towns, mines, a swamp, a frozen reach, a ruined castle, a void rift. Multiplayer runs on Colyseus with a shared-world combat and ground-loot resolver. The Fly.io machine stops when the last player leaves and cold-boots on the next connection, so an empty world costs almost nothing to keep online.

Solo · world design, rendering, multiplayer server

  • three.js
  • React
  • Colyseus
  • TypeScript
  • Fly.io
  • Postgres
Live2026

Church Atlas

A multi-track timeline of biblical history, from creation to the apostolic era.

People, nations, prophecies, and events on parallel horizontal tracks, with click-to-pin detail panels carrying verse text, neighbouring-event context, and an embedded map. Free and signup-free, and embeddable inside Church Lectern as a writing aid. This is the grown-up successor to an earlier timeline project of mine that never quite worked.

Solo · chronology data model, visualisation, embed protocol

  • Vite
  • React 19
  • TypeScript
  • D3
  • Leaflet
  • Tailwind v4

Also built

2026Live

Moses Cho Films

A Next.js portfolio with an admin uploader backed by S3 and Neon, so the client manages their own reel without touching code. Designed around a light, restrained theme that keeps attention on the footage instead of the interface.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind
  • AWS S3
  • Neon Postgres
  • Netlify
Visit live
2026In development

Baby Logs

A mobile app for the blurry first months: log feeding, sleep, diapers, tummy time, and measurements, and have every entry sync across everyone caring for the baby. Households share one timeline, with a day-review screen that turns a chaotic night into something you can actually read back. Mobile only, with account deletion built in for App Store compliance.

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • TypeScript
  • Neon Postgres
2026In development

IronSharp

Groups read a daily passage, answer two reflection questions, and pray together. A ground-up rewrite of an earlier no-code prototype into a real mobile app with its own backend: Expo Router on the client, Hono and Drizzle on the server, Neon Auth for identity. Named for Proverbs 27:17.

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • NativeWind
  • Hono
  • Drizzle
  • Neon
  • Railway
2026In development

Selah

Four features and nothing else. Read any of the 66 books in a clean serif layout with highlights, inline notes, and offline chapter caching. Track shareable reading plans day by day. Keep prayer lists that reset daily or weekly on their own. Build memorisation decks straight from the reader. Local-first, so it works with no connection and no account.

  • React Native
  • Expo Router
  • TypeScript
  • Local-first
2026In development

Tidewater

A camera app that identifies sea life (shells, crabs, jellies, mystery blobs) and returns a structured field-guide entry: common and scientific name, rarity, conservation status, and a touch-safety rating telling you whether the thing in front of you is safe to pick up. Identification runs on Claude Opus 4.8 vision. Every find is saved to a gamified local field journal.

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • Claude Opus 4.8 vision
  • TypeScript
  • Local-first
2023Live

Chosen Music Lessons

A marketing and booking site for a private music teacher, with contact routing through SendGrid and hosting on AWS.

  • React
  • JavaScript
  • CSS
  • AWS
  • SendGrid
Chosen Music Lessons screenshot
2023Live

Van Holten Shots

A high-volume photography portfolio where the photographer manages galleries directly, with layered IAM controlling who can see which sets.

  • React
  • JavaScript
  • CSS
  • AWS
  • SendGrid
Van Holten Shots screenshot
2021Archived

Ennui

Started as a final project for a college course and kept going well past the due date. A full open world rendered in a terminal, with a hand-rolled GUI layer on Linux.

  • C/C++
  • Linux/Unix
  • GUI
Ennui screenshot
2023Archived

The Helper Organization

Co-founded and run with a close friend: the professional and pastoral halves of what I do, pointed at the same problem. Site since retired.

  • React
  • JavaScript
  • AWS
  • SendGrid
The Helper Organization screenshot

02Experience

A less linear path than most.

Engineering, delivery, teaching, and a fair amount of coffee. Filter it down to whichever part you came here for.

  1. Aug 2022 – Present

    Current

    Technical Project Manager · Barefoot Solutions

    San Diego, CA

    I own product delivery end to end for six client products at a time: PRDs, roadmaps, budgets from $50K to $1M, and the client relationship, across stakeholders, designers, engineers, and lawyers.

    • Shipped Compass AI, a self-hosted AI platform for regulated industries.
    • Steered a fintech platform through FINRA approval.
    • Stay hands-on across the stack, from QA to AWS infrastructure and analytics.
    • AWS
    • Quality Assurance
    • Google Analytics 4
    • CSS
    • Public Speaking
  2. Nov 2021 – Jun 2022

    Fullstack Engineer · togetherAI

    Remote, Australia

    Integrated togetherAI with third-party health data providers so the platform could surface anomalies in children’s wellbeing.

    • Built data integrations against external biomedical health providers.
    • Shipped across web and mobile on a distributed, cross-timezone team.
    • Vue.js
    • TypeScript
    • Tailwind
    • AWS
    • Mobile Development
  3. Feb 2021 – Jun 2021

    Instructional Assistant · Diablo Valley College

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Carried the full responsibilities of a campus computer science instructor, a position normally restricted to candidates who have already completed a master’s program.

    • Lecturing
    • Teaching
    • Public Speaking
    • Curriculum
  4. Feb 2021 – Jun 2021

    Lead Computer Science Tutor · Diablo Valley College

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Founder, hiring manager, and lead tutor of the college’s computer science tutoring department: a small team of the strongest student programmers on campus.

    • Pitched and launched the department; it became school-funded.
    • Hired, trained, and managed the tutoring staff.
    • Teaching
    • Hiring
    • Tutoring
    • Public Speaking
  5. Nov 2020 – Jun 2021

    Lead Barista · Blue Bottle Coffee

    Bay Area, CA

    The second most profitable café in the company, trained to handle hundreds of customers a day without letting either quality or the customer experience slip.

    • Customer Service
    • Leadership
    • Food & Beverage
  6. May 2020 – Jan 2021

    Fullstack Engineering Intern · Fyresite

    Phoenix, AZ

    Built high-end products for clients across the U.S. at an agency partnered with names like GMG, awarded for “National Excellence” in 2021 and growing roughly 70% year over year.

    • React
    • Flutter
    • Dart
    • MySQL
    • AWS
    • CSS
  7. Jun 2019 – Jul 2020

    Program Instructor · Upward Bound

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Sole instructor for federally-funded computer science classes serving underprivileged, first-generation college students. I hand-tailored every curriculum and mentored students closely throughout.

    • Designed the curriculum from scratch for each cohort.
    • Taught high-school-aged students with no prior programming background.
    • Lecturing
    • Curriculum Design
    • Teaching
    • Mentorship
  8. Jun 2019 – Jul 2020

    Mathematics Tutor · Upward Bound

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Calculus tutor for first-generation college students through the same federally-funded TRIO program.

    • Calculus
    • Tutoring
    • Teaching
  9. Mar 2018 – Jul 2020

    Club Founder & Coordinator · Cru

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Founded and ran the largest Christian club on campus. As primary facilitator I led weekly Bible studies, hosted events, and welcomed new attendees every week.

    • Leadership
    • Public Speaking
    • Event Planning
    • Teaching
  10. Feb 2018 – Aug 2020

    Communication Tutor · Diablo Valley College

    Pleasant Hill, CA

    Selected from the top tier of the communication program to tutor the college’s world-competitive speech and debate team, alongside the general student body.

    • Public Speaking
    • Debate
    • Tutoring
    • Communication

Volunteer

  1. Mar 2021 – Jan 2026

    Café Manager & Founder · Grove Church

    San Diego, CA

    Founded and ran the Grove Café: training, scheduling, sourcing, and upkeep. The volunteer team matches a typical Starbucks’ production rate inside a few hours each Sunday.

    • Built the operation from nothing: equipment, workflow, supply chain, and staffing.
    • Trained and scheduled a rotating volunteer team for nearly five years.
    • Leadership
    • Team Building
    • Operations
    • Food & Beverage
  2. Jul 2015 – Jul 2020

    Camp Counselor · Koinonia Conference Grounds

    Watsonville, CA

    A veteran counselor across five summers: leading Bible studies, guiding kids between events, and handling discipline with patience.

    • Leadership
    • Mentorship
    • Public Speaking

Education

B.S., Economics

UC San Diego20202022

A.S., Computer Science

Diablo Valley College20182020

4.0 GPA. Founded the college-funded COMSC tutoring department and served as an Instructional Assistant, a role normally reserved for candidates holding a master’s degree.

A.S.-T, Mathematics

Diablo Valley College20172020

3.8 GPA.

A.A.-T, Speech Communication & Rhetoric

Diablo Valley College20182020

4.0 GPA. Competed on the Speech & Debate team, placing 1st and 2nd against UC Berkeley, SF State, and other UCs.

03About

How I got here.

I got into software at twelve by trying to make a video game. I spent the next several years rebuilding Pac-Man and Pong before graduating to sprawling RuneScape knock-offs. I never really stopped; the games just turned into products.

Today I am the Technical Project Manager at Barefoot Solutions, where I own delivery end to end for six client products at a time: the PRDs, the roadmaps, budgets from $50K to $1M, and the client relationship, which means being the number they dial when something goes wrong.

Recent work includes Compass AI, our self-hosted AI platform for regulated industries, and steering a fintech platform through FINRA approval. Before that came software for fire departments, COVID-era concert streaming, and biomedical tracking for an AI company in Australia.

I have watched teams fall apart because nobody set the culture. It gets set by whoever is leading, deliberately or by default, so I set it deliberately: clear ownership, tight feedback loops, and a team that likes the work and each other. That kind of team keeps its people and ships on time.

The titles I care about most are husband, father, and teacher. The hours left over go to bespoke leatherworking.

Product & Delivery

  • Scoping
  • Estimation
  • Roadmapping
  • Stakeholder management
  • Product strategy
  • QA
  • Public speaking

Generative AI

  • Agentic workflows
  • Claude Code & Cowork
  • Prompt engineering
  • Structured output
  • AI feature scoping

Engineering

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • React Native / Expo
  • Node.js
  • Vue.js
  • three.js
  • C/C++
  • Dart / Flutter

Platform & Data

  • AWS
  • Postgres / Neon
  • Drizzle
  • Railway
  • Netlify
  • MySQL
  • Google Analytics 4

04 · Contact

If you are hiring for something hard, let’s talk.

I am open to roles where the job is to make a complicated thing land: technical program and product management, delivery leadership, or engineering work that needs someone who can also run the room.