About RO2 Labs

Built by someone
who ships real software.

Hey, I'm Ricky.

I'm a principal-level software architect and technical delivery leader based in Austin, TX. For the past 10+ years I've been building mission-critical software for the U.S. Air Force and DoD, growing engineering organizations, shipping real products under adversarial conditions, and personally delivering $100M+ in contract value.

RO2 Labs is my side venture. The goal is simple: build tools I actually want to exist, priced fairly, with no VC pressure or enterprise bloat. Everything here has been used in a real project before it ships.

That includes ratchet, an AI code reviewer I built and now run in production — it reviews the pull requests behind this site, and I sell it as a $99/month product to other teams shipping AI-written code. I use Claude Code and Gemini as primary dev tools, run local 70B+ parameter models on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra, and think a lot about how AI changes the craft of software delivery for people who actually care about it.

Career highlights

$100M+ Contract value shaped & won across DoD programs
15 → 121 Personnel growth leading a DoD C2 modernization program
180 → 30d Mission planning timeline reduction via a DoD R&D initiative
5 sites Domestic & overseas fieldings, personally on-site

What I work with

Languages & Frameworks

  • Java / Spring Boot
  • React / Node.js
  • GraphQL
  • Flutter / Dart
  • PostgreSQL

Infrastructure

  • Kubernetes
  • Docker / Helm
  • AWS IL4 / IL6
  • Terraform
  • GitLab CI

AI Dev Tooling

  • Claude Code
  • Gemini
  • LiteLLM + oMLX serving
  • Local LLMs (70B+)
  • Mac Studio M3 Ultra

Sites we've built

  • Spring Fed Behavior

    Coming-soon site and interest list for an Austin parent behavior-coaching practice. Astro on Cloudflare Workers, with a spam-protected signup and privacy-first, cookieless analytics.

Want to work together?

If you're building something in the DoD/IC space, or want to talk shop about AI-accelerated development, reach out directly.

hello@ro2-labs.ai