About

I've spent the last 15 years or so in data science. Learning the stack, running teams, partnering with engineers, working at companies like Zillow, Convoy, Tomo, LaunchDarkly, Philo, and now Clerk as Head of Data.

In the last year, I've been exploring what else I can do. I started leaning into software development, using Claude Code and other LLM agent tools to actually build out ideas I'd been sitting on for years but never had the time or ability to work on. Turns out, with the right tools, even a data person can ship real software if you know the right questions to ask.

That's been a genuinely fun learning adventure. And I wanted a place to document it. The learnings, the processes, the tools, the headaches, the moments where something just clicks. That's basically what this site is.

What I'm building

  • Homier — private vacation home sharing for people who already trust each other
  • DailyWords — a journaling app with AI reflection and client-side encryption
  • This site — where I write about how I build things
  • More stuff coming soon

I'm building these under the moniker Slow Down Industries, using Claude Code and an agentic engineering workflow. React, Firebase, TypeScript.

Background

I started in physics. My first real job out of Northeastern was at a particle accelerator facility, where I was building detection algorithms for nuclear materials in cargo containers. Nobody called it data science back then, but that's basically what it was. Turns out I loved it.

Zillow was the formative stretch. I was their first data analyst hire in 2009, and over ten years I went from pulling queries to directing data science teams. I built the original agent advertising pricing model that effectively helped take the company public, and I ended up leading the data org for their fastest-growing revenue segments.

After that I grew a data science org from 4 to 25 at Convoy, I was an early employee at a mortgage fintech startup called Tomo, I co-led the shift from seat-based to usage-based pricing at LaunchDarkly, and most recently I was at Philo where I modernized the data stack and got the team set up with Claude Code and agentic workflows. I also mentored startups at Techstars for a few years.

I write about more traditional data and analytics topics here too. The day job stuff. It all kind of bleeds together at this point.

Get in touch

LinkedIn is the best way to reach me. I'm also steve-brownell on GitHub.