Now: Plaza · Veil Labs · Trigram

EricSchoffstall

Software engineer. I made gulp.js, co-founded a few companies, and spent a couple of years on security at Apple.

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About

I like building things end to end: backends, frontends, and the infrastructure in between.

Most of my career has been at small companies, a few of which I helped start, plus a couple of years at Apple.

A lot of it has been about scale: systems handling billions of events a day at Apple, and geospatial analytics over billions of civic data points at Stae.

These days I’m co-founding Plaza and Veil Labs, consulting with Trigram, and doing open source.

Open source

Some things I’ve made

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • Bun
  • React
  • React Native
  • Python
  • Postgres
  • PostGIS
  • WebGPU
  • C / C++
  • Swift
  • Kubernetes
  • Pulumi
  • CoreML
  • WebRTC
  • GIS

Work

Where I’ve worked

  1. 2026 — nowPhoenix

    Plaza

    Co-founder

    A way for AI agents to work with the physical world: geocoding, routing, search and more across the entire OpenStreetMap planet, as an API and MCP server.

  2. 2026 — nowPhoenix

    Veil Labs

    Co-founder

    A game studio building AI-native game experiences. Our first game is Apparish, a location-based ghost hunting game for iOS and Android.

  3. 2026 — nowPhoenix

    Trigram

    Consultant

    A small collective of senior engineers. I help companies with architecture, infrastructure, and getting products from zero to one.

  4. 2024 — 2026Cupertino / SF

    Apple

    Senior Staff Engineer · SEAR

    Worked on macOS and iOS security in SEAR: anti-malware, the next generation of sandboxing, and a platform for running AI agents at scale. Built systems handling billions of events a day.

  5. 2021 — 2024Los Angeles

    CreateSafe

    Head of Engineering

    Led engineering and research for a platform helping independent musicians with distribution, royalties and fan engagement, plus some early generative audio work.

  6. 2016 — 2021New York

    Stae

    Co-founder / CTO

    Co-founded a civic data company and built its data, analytics and GIS platform: geospatial analytics across billions of civic data points, used by city and county governments across North America and the US Census Bureau.

  7. 2015 — 2016San Francisco

    Charmed

    Co-founder / CTO

    A video speed dating app for iOS and desktop.

  8. 2014 — 2016San Francisco

    Factory X

    Engineering Lead

    Built prototypes and products alongside large companies as part of a venture studio.

  9. 2010 — 2014Phoenix

    Fractal

    Co-founder / CTO

    Co-founded a small consultancy building products for companies and startups.

  10. 2012 — 2013Phoenix

    Bechtel

    API Infrastructure Engineer

    Worked on API gateways, internal API standards, and a portal for exploring internal data.

Lab

Experiments

All experiments