Resume

Skills & Tools

AI engineering

Agentic development with Claude Code and Codex (daily practice), agentic workflows, Anthropic and OpenAI LLM APIs, prompt & context engineering, LLM-powered product features, local inference lab (NVIDIA DGX Spark, multi-GPU RTX 6000/NVLink), Whisper

Languages

Go, Python, Swift, JavaScript / TypeScript, C# / .NET, SQL, HTML / CSS

Frameworks & runtimes

Waffle (Go), Chi, REST APIs, HTMX, Tailwind, Unity (WebGL), Node, MongoDB

Cloud & DevOps

Linux (systemd), AWS (EC2, ALB, Route 53, DocumentDB), microservices, observability, Cloudflare, Docker, GitHub Actions

Education & content

Curriculum and instructional design, technical writing, video production, grant writing

Selected Experience

Feb 2020 – Present

Founder & Principal Engineer

Intelligence Builders · San Francisco, CA

Founded Feb 2020 alongside professorship; transitioned to full-time Aug 2025. Bootstrapped and federal-grant funded.

• Secured federal grant-subrecipient status and a development contract for Mission HydroSci, a U.S. Department of Education–funded, research-backed educational game.
• Technical lead for the ~20-person Mission HydroSci team spanning development, design, and art: directly managed five developers and set platform choice, technical direction, and tooling.
• Architected, built, and operate the Strata platform as sole engineer — four production Go services (learning hub, gameplay telemetry, save persistence, automated grading) — managing all AWS deployment and operations, including a cross-service migration de-identifying all student data.
• Piloted Strata with 765 students across 11 schools (Spring 2026); pilot research found consistently strong student engagement — including students conventional instruction often loses — and near-universal teacher intent to return. Scaling to 9,000–10,000 students and 180–200 teachers for Fall 2026.
• Shipped AI-powered learning analytics: LLM-generated performance statements and feedback that help teachers identify struggling students — cited by pilot teachers among the dashboard's most-valued features.
• Conducted the pilot's qualitative research with AI-assisted analysis (Claude Code): coded eight teacher interviews against a 71-code codebook and authored the research report and Fall 2026 mixed-methods study plan.
• Created and maintain Waffle, an open-source Go web framework (44 composable packages: auth, data access, observability) powering all company products.
• Sustain solo delivery of scope typically staffed by a team through daily agentic AI development (Claude Code, Codex).

Feb 2008 – Jul 2025

Associate Teaching Professor, Computer Science / Information Technology

Electrical Engineering & Computer Science · University of Missouri

• Selected nine times by graduating CS and IT seniors for the CS Department Faculty Award; courses rated 4+/5 every semester; alumni hired by Apple, Meta, and other leading technology companies.
• Taught team-based iOS application development, software engineering, database systems, web application development, object-oriented design, C#/.NET, Python, and senior capstone.
• Secured an Ameren partnership deploying Boston Dynamics Spot robots for student research on autonomous nuclear-plant inspections (2021); Spot performed with Marching Mizzou at a televised halftime — the first robot halftime performance in college football.
• Featured speaker on Boston Dynamics' Spot User Group: Academia & Research webinar, alongside researchers from UVA, CU Boulder, and TNO.
• Transitioned to full-time founder in Aug 2025, continuing Mission HydroSci development under contract.

May 2016 – May 2018

Chief Technology Advisor

Reynolds Journalism Institute · School of Journalism · University of Missouri

• Advised the institute on applications of AI in journalism; built the Debate Analyzer, applying IBM Watson AI text analysis to the 2016 presidential debates — featured in a television interview.
• Designed and built an iOS app for 14ymedio, Cuba's independent digital news outlet, enabling readers to share news peer-to-peer despite restricted Internet access.

Feb 2008 – Dec 2015

Director of Information Technology Program

Computer Science Department · College of Engineering · University of Missouri

• Took over the program as its founding AT&T grant expired; grew enrollment 4.6× (70 → 320 students), modernized CS/IT curriculum, and rebuilt annual funding 6.5× ($200K → $1.3M) through industry partnerships.

1995 – 1999

Co-Founder and Co-Director

Center for Technology Innovations in Education (CTIE) · University of Missouri

• Pioneered one of the nation's first college-wide student laptop programs (Apple PowerBook), deploying to 1,500 College of Education students; used by Apple as a model for other institutions and featured in The Wall Street Journal.
• Technical director for $6M+ in grant-funded R&D (NSF, U.S. Department of Education, SBC Foundation), supporting 20+ developers across concurrent projects.
• Directed center operations — budgets, personnel, facilities — including a $500,000 facilities renovation.

1994 – 1995

Multimedia Title Director; Manager, Multimedia Educational Software Products

IBM K-12 · Atlanta, GA

• Directed an eight-person team developing "Magic Canvas!", shipped standalone and bundled with OS/2; created and managed the IBM Educational Software Summer Design Project.
• Project-managed a ten-person team delivering a series of educational K-12 titles.

1993

Software Developer

SEGA of America · Redwood City, CA

• Developed SEGALink, an interpreted programming language, and video player software for the SEGA CD, demonstrating authoring-tool development against the era's assembly/C workflows (three-month assignment while at IBM).

1990 – 1994

Education Instruction Specialist → Programming and Technology Services Team Leader

IBM EduQuest · Atlanta, GA

• Led the Programming and Technology Services team within the multimedia titles development group, building multimedia development tools for DOS, Windows, and Macintosh.
• Developed a network-based multimedia database management system; co-developed the second generation of the Digital Video Interactive (DVI) Audio/Video Kernel for DOS.

Selected Projects

• Waffle (2024 – present) — open-source Go web framework: 44 composable packages (auth, config, data access, observability) powering the Strata platform, Intelligence Builders products, and this site. [github.com/dalemusser/waffle]
• Strata platform (2022 – present) — StrataHub, StrataLog, StrataSave, StrataForge: learning-analytics and game-services platform for Mission HydroSci and other learning environments; piloted with 765 students (Spring 2026), scaling to ~10,000 (Fall 2026).
• Musser, D., Causey, J., Duke, B. (1993). "SEGA Digital Video and Animation System." [Computer Program]. IBM EduQuest, Atlanta, GA.

Education

1992

Doctor of Philosophy

Instructional Design and Technology

The Ohio State University

1989

Master of Arts

Instructional Design and Technology

The Ohio State University

1986

Bachelor of Science in Education

Physics and Mathematics Education

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Selected Awards

2010 – 2019

Computer Science Department Faculty Award (9×)

Selected nine times by graduating CS and IT seniors · University of Missouri.

2010

College of Engineering Faculty Fellowship

Awarded by the Dean of Engineering · University of Missouri.

2009

Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award

MU 2009 Faculty Recognition Awards.

Interests

AI agents, developer tooling, education and curriculum design, programming languages, and robotics.