Agustin Manriquez Cruz

Each summer, school ended and I returned to the factory floor. The experience taught me discipline, endurance, and how to remain dependable in demanding environments. It also reinforced a habit that would later shape my technical career: using every opportunity available to learn, take on greater responsibility, and improve.

Although the role strengthened my technical skills, my greatest growth was personal. Working through social anxiety, I learned to communicate clearly with professors, stay composed under pressure, and give others confidence while resolving problems. That experience taught me to pair technical problem-solving with empathy, communication, and calm decision-making.

This was my first experience owning an entire digital customer journey rather than contributing to one part of an existing application. Watching my wife manage the business showed me the real value of technology—every feature I built removed one more task from her workload. The project became a labor of love and ultimately confirmed that my future was in software, not civil engineering.

BIDFTA was where I grew from a developer completing assigned features into a technical owner responsible for entire systems at scale. I learned to navigate ambiguity, make long-term architectural decisions, collaborate directly with stakeholders, and deliver software that supported both customer experiences and daily business operations.

I ultimately left after delays in my DACA renewal created a gap in my work authorization. Although the circumstances were outside my control, the role established the level of ownership, adaptability, and technical leadership I bring to my work today.

LAIZ remains a work in progress, but it brings together mobile development, backend architecture, cloud infrastructure, secure media handling, and conversational AI within one product. It reflects a lesson that has followed me throughout my career: when I do not yet have the proof of what I can build, I create it.