Jerome Hardaway.

A working engineer who runs a nonprofit

Jerome Hardaway is a senior data and AI engineer and engineering leader. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Vets Who Code, is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and works remotely.

I served in the United States Air Force Security Forces from 2004 to 2009. After I got out I taught myself to write software, and in 2014 I founded Vets Who Code.

Vets Who Code is a fully remote, open-source program that trains veterans and military spouses to become software engineers. It charges no tuition. More than 300 people have come through it, with a 97% job placement rate and more than $20M in collective alumni earnings.

I still write most of the code. In the last twelve months I made 310 of the 361 commits to the organization’s main application. I also built its AI teaching backend and published the agent tooling we use to run the organization. I also write the curriculum standards, mentor the people in the program and teach publicly.

What I’m looking for

I am open to senior data and AI roles:

  • Senior AI Engineer: LLM applications, retrieval, evaluation and agent tooling in production.
  • Senior Data Engineer: pipelines, public and commercial data sources, schema validation and PostgreSQL.
  • AI Engineering Leader: building a data and AI team’s standards, evaluation practice and delivery from the inside.

Skills

  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • FastAPI
  • Next.js
  • React
  • PostgreSQL
  • pgvector
  • RAG
  • LLM evaluation
  • AI agents
  • Prompt engineering
  • Claude Code
  • Gemini API
  • CI/CD
  • GitHub Actions
  • Playwright
  • Vitest
  • Docker
  • Terraform
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Vercel
  • Data pipelines
  • SQL
  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Spark
  • Star schema modeling
  • Power BI
  • Pandas
  • Technical leadership
  • Mentoring

Teaching and talks

Recognition

  • Google Developer Expert
  • GitHub Star
  • White House honoree

Press

Testimonials

From organizations

Vets Who Code modernized our web infrastructure when we needed it most. They implemented safe CI/CD pipelines, migrated our hosting, and mentored our team on sustainable engineering practices. They didn’t just fix critical technical debt—they gave our leadership concrete systems and set our internal developers up for long-term self-sufficiency.

Jessica Williams, Director of Digital Marketing, Youth Villages

Without a doubt, I would hire from Vets Who Code again. The experience has been overwhelmingly positive, and I believe in veterans’ immense value to our team and our healthcare mission.

Darnell Settles III, Director of Web and Digital Strategy, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare

From veterans who came through the program

During my transition, I have signed up for and utilized services from over 14 different Non-Profits, Corporate, and State resources. […] Of all of these programs, only three have made a significant contribution to my transition, and of these three organizations, only one has truly changed my life for the better. #VetsWhoCode delivered more value to me than 12 of the non-profits combined.

Osvaldo Vargas, US Army, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Accenture Federal Services

#VetsWhoCode’s tenacious focus on language and computer science fundamentals over frameworks was invaluable in my career transition from being a Radiology Technician in the US Army to building cloud scale infrastructure at Microsoft. The coaching from the #VetsWhoCode’s talented and passionate mentor network proved to be a priceless asset even after graduating. Come ready to learn and you will succeed here.

Jeff Martin, US Army, DevOps Engineer, GitHub

I knew nothing at all of code. VetsWhoCode helped me become a successful frontend developer in Chicago — and I found a group of people that understand me. I finished my cohort over two years ago, but there’s rarely a day I don’t check in.

Carla Kroll, US Air Force, Frontend Developer, Chicago

Open source

All of my public work is on GitHub under the Vets-Who-Code organization and my own profile. The open-source program deep dive covers how the organization works in public and who wrote what.