Westley
Smith.
Built from
the ground up.

When I joined First Tactical, the company's reporting infrastructure was built on ODBC connections piped into Excel spreadsheets. Data lived in silos, metrics were inconsistent across teams, and getting a reliable number meant asking three people and hoping they agreed.

Within six months, I was selected to co-lead the data modernization initiative. I solo-architected a full Data Lakehouse using the Medallion framework in Microsoft Fabric — building the entire ETL pipeline from ERP and auxiliary sources into a scalable, high-performance warehouse.

What Got Built

• End-to-end ETL pipeline from bronze through silver to gold layers
• 41+ production Power BI reports standardizing metrics across the org
• Unified Power BI App used daily by sales leadership
• Master data governance for 10,000+ SKUs across Shopify, Elastic, and Shipwise

Why It Matters

This was not a technical exercise. The goal was to give decision-makers reliable data without requiring them to understand data infrastructure. The sales leadership team now opens the BI app every morning. That is the outcome that matters — not the architecture underneath.

More details, screenshots, and technical deep-dive coming soon.

The sales team at First Tactical had data scattered across spreadsheets, email threads, and memory. What they did not have was a single place to look at performance and make decisions based on consistent numbers.

I co-designed and built a unified Power BI app from the ground up — standardizing every metric, DAX measure, and piece of UX. It became the first thing the Chief of Sales opens every morning.

The Impact

Leadership stopped debating what the numbers were and started debating what to do about them. That shift — from "what is the data" to "what does the data mean" — is the kind of outcome worth building toward.

Full case study and screenshots coming soon.

A 5-inch freestyle quad built from bare carbon fiber frame to first flight. No kit, no shortcuts — every component selected, every connection soldered, every setting tuned by hand.

The Build

• Custom motor mounts and frame assembly
• Flight controller flashing and configuration
• VTX stack assembly and antenna tuning
• PID tuning for freestyle flight characteristics
• Multiple crash-rebuild cycles (part of the process)

Why This Matters

FPV building is the purest version of how I think about problems. You start with a pile of parts and a goal. There is no instruction manual that covers your exact setup. You figure it out, test it, crash, figure out what broke, and go again. That loop — build, test, break, learn, rebuild — is the same loop everywhere.

Build log with photos and parts list coming soon.

This ice tray was designed from scratch in Autodesk Fusion 360. Modeled, refined, and exported for 3D printing. More models coming soon.

Frame up. Solder the stack. Flash the firmware. Tune the PIDs. Crash. Rebuild. Fly cleaner. The loop never gets old.

More details, build logs, and flight footage coming soon.

Half the draw is the field. The other half is the workbench — tuning internals, swapping hop-ups, dialing in loadouts. The technical side is as compelling as the game itself.

More details, gear breakdowns, and field stories coming soon.

Circuits, solder fumes, and the satisfaction of a first power-on that does not smoke. What started as curiosity became a way of thinking about everything.

More details, project breakdowns, and build photos coming soon.

Fishing, exploring, camping — any excuse to get outside and away from a screen for a while. Some of the best ideas come when you are not trying to have them.

More stories, photos, and favorite spots coming soon.

I play to compete and unwind, not to go pro. Racquetball, pickleball, softball — whatever is in season and whoever is asking.

More coming soon.

My wife Rachelle, my parents, my sisters, my grandparents — they are the reason any of this matters. Everything I build is for them.

More coming soon.