About

Hi, I'm Jago.

I am an AI training specialist, software engineer, and mentor focused on helping teams use modern tools to improve outcomes without losing the human core of their work.

I bring 10+ years of management and training experience, combining technical execution with clear communication for mixed-skill teams.

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Mentor speaking with a small professional group

My story

I am the child of immigrants. My mother left Portugal in the 1970s before eventually settling in New Jersey. My father came of age in an England where work was scarce and competition was intense.

They moved to California in 1985 and built a network of independent record stores from scratch. Retail, hustle, and service are part of my foundation.

I grew up obsessed with computers. I hosted my own forums, built fan websites, and taught myself anything I could about the expanding digital world.

After learning about where I wanted to go, I chose a new path, committed to discipline, and formalized my technical background through education and applied work.

Journey and milestones

  • Completed a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering at UCLA (2019-2023)
  • Built a bespoke startup in school and led engineering, design, and internship operations across iOS, backend, web, data ingest, and UX.
  • Continued building with the incredible power of generative AI in one of the toughest software hiring climates in recent memory.

Selected outcomes

Internship leadership at scale

Coordinated four internship cohorts, screened 200+ candidates, supported 45 interns, and improved year-over-year retention by more than 20%.

Product and operations impact

Helped deliver iOS and web tools to thousands of users, improved retention by 30%, and raised supply chain accuracy by 80% through data and systems work.

Training and productivity gains

Led technical and non-technical teams across sectors, including OCR/document systems that increased productivity by 80% and audit workflows that reduced time by 30%.

AI implementation in practice

Built and trained an AI relevance model to match comic covers to titles, reducing manual review time by 70% while mentoring interns through the machine learning process.

Practical point of view

On agentic AI: optimistic, but disciplined

We are early in the agentic phase (AI that can perform tasks autonomously.) Some tasks are still unreliable and not worth automating yet. I do not push agents where they are not ready.

Where agents are showing strong value today is in software engineering support and structured operations: triage, drafting, documentation, and repeatable routing tasks with clear review checkpoints.

My approach is simple: start small, add guardrails, keep humans in the loop, and scale only what proves quality and measurable return.