whoami
Blake Sager
Principal Engineer
Building AI-native devloops @
trello.com.
Building software for my neighbors @
local.tech.
cat about.md
I love building tools.
As tech lead for Trello's Dev Lifecycle team, I own the inner and outer dev loops for our core repositories, ensuring our engineers can quickly and safely write, test, and ship code. Increasingly this looks like building AI-native tooling, though I still spend a good chunk of my time on the "classics" — build systems, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment infrastructure.
As a technical cofounder of local.tech, I build custom software for small and medium businesses in my community, helping local companies ditch bloated, legacy SaaS products in favor of tailored solutions that meet their unique needs.
When I'm not optimizing build times or shipping agentic pipelines, you'll find me mentoring engineers, contributing to open source, and making indie games.
git log --author=blake
Principal Engineer, Dev Lifecycle
Trello (Atlassian)Leading the Dev Lifecycle team responsible for CI, deployments, and developer tooling across Trello's core repositories. Own both inner loop (local dev experience) and outer loop (CI/CD pipelines, staging, production deploys) for the engineering organization.
Sr Backend Engineer, Backend Platform
Trello (Atlassian)Worked on the performance, reliability, and scalability of Trello's primary backend monolith.
Backend Engineer
Trello (Atlassian)Contributed to the reliability and scalability of Trello's core backend, working across API development, data modeling, and performance improvements on one of Atlassian's flagship products.
Software Engineer
ActiveProspectBuilt and extended API integrations with third-party platforms. Improved product resiliency through spooling and circuit breaker patterns, and contributed to API endpoint development across the core platform.
Jr Backend Engineer
RyderBuilt the APIs powering a new internal tracking application, adapting modern REST endpoints to work within the constraints of existing legacy database designs.
ls expertise/
Engineering & agentic tooling
AI-native SDLC flows: agents that plan, implement, review, and ship — plus CLIs, automation, and integrations that improve day-to-day developer experience.
Build, CI/CD & release
High-performance build systems: lightning-fast CI, rock-solid deploys, and enough automated guardrails to maintain safety and confidence.
Technical Leadership
Mentorship and guidance: innovation-centric technical cultures, psychological safety, and engineering growth.
contact --list
Interested in discussing developer experience, CI/CD, or dev tooling? I'd love to hear from you.