Summary
Steve Salazar is a seasoned technology leader and founder with over 18 years delivering integrated software, hardware, and product initiatives. As CTO and founder of Blackbird Studios, he leads cross-disciplinary teams from strategy through shipped products, with a track record of accelerating engineering velocity using GenAI, LLM-powered agentic systems, data transformation, and synthetic data generation. He combines hands-on engineering with design research and business strategy, having established IDEO as a preferred engineering partner and driven complex, high-ambiguity projects to execution. His leadership spans consumer IoT, streaming platforms, and large-scale digital systems, including CTO roles at Santa Clara County Housing Authority and Gimme Radio, where he delivered scalable, reliable platforms under demanding constraints. Based in San Francisco, he champions human-centered product strategy, rapid technical feasibility assessments, and a pro-team culture that aligns ambitious design goals with practical roadmaps. Notably, he has shipped real-world, AI-powered outcomes for multiple GenAI products well ahead of market, reflecting a rare blend of strategic vision and hands-on execution.
12 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Bachelor of Science (B.S.) at University of Washington
Spanish