Hi, I’m
Michael Kirkpatrick

I’m a product and operations leader focused on turning complex strategies into reliable execution. My experience spans Silicon Valley software startups and aerospace programs, including contributions to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope at Northrop Grumman. Over 15+ years, I’ve led cross-functional organizations through product development, operational integration, and scale—aligning engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and program teams around shared goals.

I specialize in helping teams work together effectively, delivering reliably, and building trust across disciplines.

You can find more about my experience on LinkedIn.

If you’re interested in working together or exploring what I can help with, I’d love chat.

michael@mekstudios.com

GitHub

Blog

San Diego, California

Side Projects

Swim.Team – Most weekday mornings, you’ll find me at the pool, either swimming or coaching with Plunge Masters. After getting enough requests for copies of our workouts, I built a simple site to share them. It’s nothing fancy—just photos of the whiteboard—but it’s a useful resource for teammates who missed practice or for prospective swimmers curious about what we do.

Catalog.beer – While running Interchange Design—a digital menu platform for breweries and counter-service restaurants—I built this open-source beer database to reduce the manual data entry required when adding a new beer to a menu. The site itself is a bit rough around the edges, but the API is solid (even if the documentation still needs finishing). A smarter search feature is also on the to-do list.

Convert Unix Time – There used to be a great resource out in the world at www.convert-unix-time.com that I used frequently. It was a wonderful tool. It's since disappeared so I thought I'd recreate the functionality myself.