I’m Rida Al Barazi.

What I’m doing now

I’m the founder and principal of Amidship, a product and engineering studio for difficult software systems. I also work on product and software architecture at Salesforce.

My current technical focus is agentic software: systems where models can use tools and take action, while state, permissions, evaluation, failure recovery, and human control remain explicit in the application.

The products I build — Agentify, PDFSight, and BranchBox — are where I test those ideas in public.

How I got here

I started building for the web in 2002 and working with Rails in 2005. Since then I’ve founded software companies, built products for startups and enterprises, led payroll product and engineering at Wave, and worked on architecture inside Salesforce.

The common thread has been moving between the business problem and the working system. I’m most useful when the problem is important, the solution is not obvious, and product and engineering decisions cannot be separated.

Writing and speaking

I write about the parts of AI and software delivery that are easy to ignore until they fail: identity, permissions, environments, context, evaluation, and the systems around the model.

In 2026 I gave two ConFoo talks on agentic coding and safe development environments. Both complete decks and their source repositories are public.

Earlier in my career, I co-authored the Beginning Rails series and helped co-found the Toronto Ruby Brigade, where we organized workshops, hack nights, and community talks.

Beyond work

I live with my wife and two daughters. Outside work, I run, make coffee, bake sourdough, study languages, and try to keep the systems in my life as intentional as the ones I build.

Let’s connect

The best place to see my current client and product work is Amidship. For technical conversation, writing, or collaboration, email me at [email protected].