About Me.
I'm Zac Ruiz, a Marine Corps veteran and JPMorgan alum who most recently served as Director of Technology & Strategic Growth for an EOS-run homebuilder doing ~130 homes per year. I've lived the L10s, Rocks, Scorecards, and the leadership meetings to manage growth, missing the mark, and failure.
Today I build custom operating systems for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets, disconnected SaaS tools, and tribal knowledge. Dashboards, workflows, data pipelines, and mobile apps are the practical components. The result is a business that is easier to operate because its systems match how it actually runs.
I approach this work as an owner. I build and operate production systems my own businesses depend on, so I bring the same questions to yours: Is it worth building? Will the team use it? Can the business own it without depending on me?
I've been running businesses since 2014 and my weapon of choice has been software engineering since 2019. Living in both worlds has taught me to see the full board, from codebase to cash flow, and to build systems and software around the realities of how businesses work in practice.
My Software Design Philosophy
Business operators and software developers tend to view the world from very different perspectives. Whether it's implementing off-the-shelf solutions or designing custom tools, this difference in worldviews is the cause of much business-related pain.
The central problem has always been, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, the ability to translate business needs into software requirements. Even then, software cannot succeed when it is asked to impose a digital solution on a flawed real-world system or process.
In a world dominated by AI this matters more than ever because AI makes software easier to produce, but it does not make a business easier to understand. When applied before the workflows, data, and decision rules are clear, software solutions will make a bad system worse. This has always been true, but AI is accelerating the consequences.
Before deciding what software should do, you must first understand how the business actually works, where it breaks down, and whether software is even the right answer (handwritten checklists have worked for thousands of years!). In that sense, my software development process begins many feet away from the computer.
What I Build
- Custom Operations Platforms. Internal platforms, dashboards, and reporting designed around real-world processes and tested with the people who will use them, so adoption problems surface early and the data stays trustworthy.
- Data & Automation. Pipelines and process automation that remove duplicate entry and unnecessary manual work, turning scattered data into decisions people trust.
- Field & Client Software. Field operations tools, client portals, and mobile apps that connect the office, the field, and the customer.
- AI-Assisted Workflows. AI where it actually helps, structured around your business knowledge and decision rules instead of bolted on.
Those are components, not the offer. The deliverable is a business that no longer depends on duct tape to run.
Industries I Know
Real estate, construction, and the trades. Builders, agents, investors, property managers, lenders, title companies, and operators whose businesses run on relationships, timing, and field execution. I know these industries well enough to ask the right questions early on, which allows me to speed up the process of learning how your business actually runs.
This sector is my bread and butter, but not my boundary. These industries involve many moving parts, consequential decisions, and little room for error when information or handoffs fail. The more complex the operation and the more expensive the mistakes, the more useful I am in making the business legible and turning that complexity into a coherent system.
Who I Work Best With
Founders and operators who know their business deeply, feel the operational drag, and want a builder who understands the business model before touching the technology. If your team duplicates work across systems, nobody fully trusts the reporting, and you spend more time managing software than managing the business, we should talk.
I'm probably not the right fit if you're looking for the cheapest engineering resource, a pixel-for-pixel build from a fixed spec, or another advisor who produces strategy without implementation.
Ways to Work Together
Every engagement begins by making the business legible, identifying the real constraint, and deciding what, if anything, should be built.
Some engagements begin with a specific operating problem: reporting no one trusts, a workflow held together by spreadsheets, disconnected field and office systems, or a product the business can no longer operate without. I diagnose the problem, design the system, and build the solution.
For companies that need ongoing technical leadership, I also work as a fractional CTO. I take responsibility for the architecture, roadmap, data model, vendor decisions, and implementation rhythm while extending that leadership into the operating model the technology is meant to support.
I'm Also Looking to Acquire
I’m actively looking to acquire profitable, owner-led businesses with strong reputations, capable people, and room to grow. I’m particularly interested in owners who care about what happens next and want what they’ve built to be carried forward thoughtfully.
The right systems reduce what your team has to remember and re-enter. It fits the real work well enough that people will use it. If that's not what you have,
