Hi, I'm Erich
I build tools that explain the problem,
teams that value each other,
and AI for the human things.
What You Get
Production ML, Not Prototypes
Systems running for billions of users. Comment ranking still live after 10+ years. News Feed quality. Avatar generation. Face tracking. Code that improves metrics, survives strategy pivots, and compounds in value.
Great Tooling as Team Multiplier
Visualization, debugging tools, human-in-the-loop infrastructure—architected from day one. Non-technical stakeholders trust decisions. Teams ship faster. Failures get debugged in hours, not weeks.
Math to Product in One Person
22 years of continuous math—from national labs to GPU clusters to shipping products. Sc.M. Applied Math (Brown), B.S. Applied Math (Columbia). Technical depth at every layer: client, backend, conceptual math. Constrained optimization to solve real problems.
Leadership Through Technical Excellence
Managed 80+ engineers, researchers, and artists at Meta while staying hands-on. Staff Engineer while directing teams. The philosophy: solve the hard technical problems first, set the standard, then scale.
Work That Compounds
15 patents, every one in production. Comment ranking system still used company-wide a decade later. Documentation, visualization, and knowledge transfer are non-negotiable—infrastructure that outlasts the team.
Hard Problems, Shipped
Avatar from photo in 2 months. Face tracking at Instagram scale. Medical imaging (fastMRI). Thermal haptics hardware. 170+ AI agent skills. The pattern: identify the constraint, jump domains if needed, ship when it matters.
Skills & Expertise
Machine Learning & Deep Learning
- PyTorch (8y)
- TensorFlow (9y)
- Machine Learning (13y)
- Computer Vision (12y)
- Natural Language Processing (13y)
- CLIP (3y)
- GPT-3/LLMs (3y)
- Stable Diffusion (2y)
VR/AR & Spatial Computing
- VR/AR Development (9y)
- 3D Graphics (9y)
- Face Tracking (7y)
- Avatar Systems (8y)
- Spatial Computing (9y)
- Unity (8y)
- Mobile AR (7y)
Specialized Domains
- Ranking Systems (11y)
- Recommendation Systems (11y)
- System Design (12y)
- Medical AI (5y)
- Applied Mathematics (18y)
- Probability Theory (15y)
- Nonlinear Dynamics (14y)
Languages & Tools
- Python (15y)
- TypeScript/JavaScript (8y)
- C++ (10y)
- C# (8y)
- PHP/Hack (12y)
- Rust (2y)
Leadership
- Engineering Management (7y)
- Technical Leadership (10y)
- Team Building (7y)
- Hiring & Interviewing (10y)
- Cross-functional Collaboration (12y)
- Product Strategy (10y)
Notable Work
Claude Skills Collection
~160 production-ready AI skills spanning ML, CV, audio, psychology, and developer tools. Growing collection with interactive showcase.
Open-source skill collection powering developer workflows
WinDAGs.ai
Graph orchestration platform using Claude Skills for complex AI workflows. Entering closed beta.
DAG-based AI orchestration for production systems
Expungement.Guide
Accessible legal resource helping people understand criminal record expungement processes.
Making legal processes understandable for those who need it most
Sobriety.Tools
Recovery support platform with tools for people navigating sobriety.
Building technology that supports recovery journeys
Facebook News Feed Ranking
Ranked high-quality sources, de-ranked feed spam, detected timely news with low-pass filters at FB scale, identified fake news and like-baiting. Work described in News Feed FYI blog posts.
Improved feed quality for billions; reduced viral hoaxes; patented freshness algorithms
Facebook Comment Ranking
ML Lead. Created explore/exploit Thompson sampling approach. Used embeddings for relevance in 2015. Built Commentology—ranking visualization and config testing tool suite still used company-wide today.
Tool suite still in production a decade later; significantly improved comment quality
Facebook Spaces Avatar System
6th engineer on Facebook's first social VR app. Owned avatar system, built auto-generation from photos in 2 months, became EM of avatar/identity team, hired ex-Pixar, parametric rebuild with blendshapes, better ML, mobile editor—all with fewer than 12 engineers.
Accomplished with tiny team what Meta's later Social VR efforts couldn't with hundreds more engineers
Oculus Vision VR Tools
Built VR apps pre-Oculus Rift release (2016) for design and vision teams to collaborate. Exposed first-order error/jitter calculations to product designers who could, in VR, re-place tracking LEDs or test new CAD geometries. VR to make VR.
Accelerated product development by letting designers test in VR before hardware existed
Thermal Haptics for VR ('Fire and Ice')
Peltier-cooled VR controllers providing hot/cold sensations for immersive VR. Won Judges' Choice Award at Facebook Hack 53 (2016).
Hackathon win; filed patent; demonstrated novel haptic modality; led to Building 8 research
AR Face Tracking (Instagram)
CV/ML for mobile AR face tracker with FACS expression tracking and audio-based lipsync.
Production face tracking shipped to Instagram AR effects used by millions daily
fastMRI Dataset Release
Contributed to fastMRI website, dataset release, and competition kick-off with NYU Langone.
Supported open dataset release enabling medical AI research community
Experience
2025 - Present
Curiositech
Portland-based product studio building purpose-driven applications across recovery, legal aid, AI, and developer tools.
- 9 products shipped: Sobriety.Tools, Expungement.Guide, WinDAGs.ai, SomeClaudeSkills.com, and more
- 170+ AI agent skills built and open-sourced; DAG-based orchestration framework (WinDAGs) entering closed beta
- Full-stack from concept to production: Next.js, Cloudflare, Supabase, Claude AI, computer vision pipelines
Aug 2023 - Sep 2025
Meta
Facebook AI Editing
Managed mobile and ML engineers integrating CV and LLMs into creation tools
- Shipped AI-powered editing features to billions of users across Facebook mobile apps
Jun 2022 - Jul 2023
Meta
Avatars Craft
Led avatar customization, asset pipeline, and ML integration; managed 40+ engineers including EMs
- Scaled avatar systems across Meta VR ecosystem; shipped ML-powered generation with visualization tools
Jun 2020 - Jun 2022
Meta
XR Tech
Built CV/ML for Facebook face tech: mobile AR face tracker, FACS expression tracking, audio lipsync
- Shipped production face tracking to Instagram AR effects used by millions daily
Aug 2019 - May 2020
Meta
Instagram AR
Led effect curation and personalized ranking; hired art curators; surfaced avant-garde Spark effects
- Improved discovery of high-quality AR effects, increasing engagement and creator retention
Nov 2018 - Aug 2019
Meta
FAIR (Facebook AI Research)
Managed AI engineers on embodied agents, MRI compressed sensing, AlphaZero open-source
- Supported fastMRI dataset release with NYU Langone
Dec 2016 - Nov 2018
Meta
Facebook Spaces & Social VR
6th engineer. Owned avatar system, built auto-gen from photos in 2 months, became EM, hired ex-Pixar, parametric rebuild with <12 engineers
- Shipped best-reviewed avatars (FastCompany); accomplished what later efforts couldn't with 100s more engineers
Nov 2016
Meta
Building 8 (Hackamonth)
LIDAR social VR room scans; thermal haptics research; peltier-cooled VR controllers
- Filed patent on thermal haptics; demonstrated novel haptic modality
Jan 2016 - Oct 2016
Meta (Oculus)
Oculus Vision
Built VR apps pre-Rift release for design/vision teams. Exposed first-order error/jitter calculations to designers who could re-place tracking LEDs or test CAD geometries in VR
- VR to make VR—accelerated product development before hardware existed
Jan 2015 - Dec 2015
Meta (Facebook)
Comment Ranking
Created explore/exploit Thompson sampling approach. Used embeddings for relevance (2015!). Built Commentology—visualization and config testing tool suite
- Commentology still used company-wide a decade later
Jun 2013 - Dec 2014
Meta (Facebook)
News Feed Ranking
Ranked high-quality sources, de-ranked spam, detected timely news with low-pass filters at FB scale, identified fake news and like-baiting. Built first CV-based filter (hackathon win)
- Pioneered CV in newsfeed ranking; filed patent; improved user experience for billions
May 2012 - May 2013
Newsle
Entity disambiguation, industry/subject prediction, news clustering, recommendation system
- Linked 500k users by semantic content; enabled personalized news discovery
Sep 2011 - May 2012
Quid
Network visualizations of company interrelationships, text mining, unsupervised learning
- Built visualization tools for understanding company ecosystems
Jun 2011 - Aug 2011
Rhode Island College
Taught AP Calculus to highly-motivated secondary students
- Shared mathematical foundations with next generation
Jun 2010
Pierre and Marie Curie University
Paris VI
Stochastic and partial differential equations research
- Contributed to mathematical research in probability theory
Jun 2008 - Aug 2008
NASA JPL
Systems engineering on Project Constellation
- Contributed to next-generation spacecraft program
Jun 2006 - Aug 2006
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
X-ray crystallography of Nitinol under sustained strain; algorithmic inference of crystallographic patterns
- Published and presented paper on crystallographic pattern inference