Dakota Pitts-Price

I am a Principal Software Engineer with over twelve years of experience creating high-quality digital products that customers love. I am an excellent communicator and leader, with a knack for turning complex problems into actionable steps. I am highly self-motivated, solution-oriented, and eager to step in wherever I am needed most to help a company scale and grow.

Recommendations

"Dakota consistently elevates the teams and projects he works on. It was a genuine pleasure collaborating with him, and he’s a rare engineer who can seamlessly bridge the gap between product thinking and software execution. He regularly provided thoughtful and practical feedback on designs that helped shape them into stronger, more successful features. I could always trust that any project I handed off to Dakota would be delivered with exceptional professionalism and care. I also had the opportunity to work closely with him on several novel and experimental initiatives, and I was impressed by his aptitude for learning new technologies and applied them effectively. I recommend Dakota without hesitation."

Harvey, Product Design Lead | Former Netflix, Amazon, Roblox, Disney, Babylist
"I have worked with Dakota for over 10 years, across multiple projects and company stages, and he has consistently proven to be an exceptional developer. We first worked together when he helped me develop an app for a side project. From day one, Dakota stood out for his flexibility, speed of execution, and ability to proactively suggest better solutions rather than simply implementing instructions. He thinks like a builder, not just a coder. Dakota later became the lead developer on Kidjo at launch, where he played a central role in turning the product vision into a stable, scalable app for Android and iOS. His reliability were critical during that phase. Today, I continue to work with Dakota on all of our app projects at Infinity Loop. He delivers, he communicates clearly, and he follows through. In an environment where reliability is rare, Dakota is consistently dependable. If you are looking for a developer who combines strong technical skills with judgment, initiative, and long-term reliability, Dakota is someone I recommend without hesitation"

Etienne, Co-Founder @ Infinity Loop Capital, Founding CMO @ Kidjo
"Dakota was a standout engineer at startup, and he was a great delight to work with. I hired Dakota in 2018, and he was a full stack developer on my team for five years. I was incredibly impressed by and grateful for his technical versatility and ability to adapt to business needs. He was a key contributor to projects ranging from a photo editing iOS app using Swift, to a video-based shopping website using Python, to a VR app using Unity. Dakota brings fun energy to the team, and I would work with him again in a heartbeat."

—Chris Lau, CEO @ Precious
"Dakota is an excellent communicator & has very quick turnaround time! Very knowledgeable & a pleasure to work with. Will definitely hire him again in the future :)"

—Keith Mauppa, Senior Programs Manager @ NYU Entrepreneurial Institute
“Dakota was an exceptional addition to our team when he joined in 2018. What set him apart was his ability to take vague or incomplete requirements and turn them into working solutions—a rare skill in the startup environment where specs are evolving daily. He consistently delivered high-quality code and communicated complex technical issues with clarity and precision. I always felt confident having Dakota lead sprint cycles and releases, knowing they would be handled thoughtfully and effectively. He was a pleasure to work with, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with him again in the future.”

—Dan Lau, CTO @ Curious Creator Co
"Big shoutout to Dakota — an awesome Senior Developer. He does all our app Dev. Super skilled, always available when you need help, and consistently brings energy and enthusiasm. Dakota is also really strong at self-management and ownership, which makes collaboration smooth and delivery reliable. Highly recommend working with him!"

Adrien, Co-Founder @ Infinity Loop Capital, Founding CTO @ Kidjo

Selected work

Daycare.com

“Empowering Families and Daycare Providers with Innovative Childcare Solutions”

Website

Came in early and built the business from zero to funding.
Engineered a high-performance Python backend scaling to 10,000 RPS while sustaining sub-200 ms latency.
Rebuilt and stabilized a React/Next.js frontend serving 750K+ MAU.
Designed auto-scaling AWS infrastructure and one-click deployments (ELB, ECS, CI/CD, etc).
Unblocked onboarding funnel bottlenecks, growing subscription ARR from $0 to $500K in 4 months.
Leveraged user research, A/B testing, and SEO to grow YAU to 2M+.
Built and led a high-performing engineering team

Precious

“A YC back company, Precious is the iPhone app that uses AI to tell the story of your children growing up.”

Website App store YC Profile

Built and maintained the iOS application and Python backend; served as lead backend developer for StyleMuse and lead developer for Hangout Games.
Leveraged user research and rapid prototyping to scale subscriptions past 100K, generating over $6M in ARR.
Led multiple high-impact projects, including a tool that reduced artwork turnaround time by 30× (from 60 minutes to 2 minutes).
Contributed to the development of a state-of-the-art face identification ML model.
Built an on-device ML image pipeline that processed a full photo library in under 30 minutes.

Infinity Loop Capitol

“ILC owns and operates a wide variety of digital assets reaching a yearly audience of 15 Million users”

Website App store Play store

Built and shipped their iOS + Android app suite (500K+ MAU).
Optimized ad delivery with A/B tests + analytics, powering 40M+ monthly impressions.
Created an automated build and deployment pipeline to release 50 state-specific variants of our DMV app.
Launched multiple products that expanded the audience to and beyond 15 million users.

Genji

“Genji is the social listening tool built to supercharge game growth. With 24/7 social listening, providing instant insights, Genji saves you time & money so you can focus on building a great game for your community.”

Built highly parallel AI/ML pipelines processing 100s of GBs of data.
Deployed GPU-powered cloud infrastructure to run an in-house LLM.
Utilized our own LLM and ChatGPT to generate summaries from 1000s of user messages.
Created RAG agent generation systems tailored to user needs.
Applied techniques such as TF-IDF to parse gigabytes of messages into customer-relevant topics.

Adaptify

“The only white-labeled platform that fully automates prompt & keyword research, content, backlinks, and reporting for agencies.”

Website

Extracted competitor marketing intel using LLMs + robust XML parsing.
Designed LLM-driven branching logic for stronger social reasoning.
Wrote high-performing prompts that drove 150% traffic growth for customers.

Kidjo

Kidjo is a subscription-based edutainment platform for kids. With over 4500 videos, audiobooks, and games, Kidjo delivers a complete, immersive experience across three dynamic apps.

App store Play store Web app Amazon app store Galaxy store Roku

Shipped iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, web, and backend from zero → launch and beyond.
Designed a horizontally scalable video pipeline (HLS/DASH, H.264/H.265) handling thousands of videos at once.
Drove COPPA compliance across product and engineering.
Sold (undisclosed).

"Dakota is an excellent communicator & has very quick turnaround time! Very knowledgeable & a pleasure to work with. Will definitely hire him again in the future :)"