We are humans

We have pets

Who we are

Our People

We’re a dozen(ish) humans in Nashville (mostly!) who make software for a living and actually mean it. We have pets, strong opinions, and a real soft spot for a hard problem. Work with us and you get people, not a portal. The same faces show up from the first call to launch day.

Richard Whitfield

Senior Software Engineer

Richard turns fuzzy requirements into clean, working software, and leads the teams that ship it. He’s built full-stack applications for clients across music, real estate, non-profit, healthcare, and finance, with a gift for translating the technical into plain business sense. He came up through Nashville Software School, and off the clock he’s happiest playing in the dirt, sometimes with his kids joining in, or with a guitar in hand.

Chris Downs

Founder & CEO

Chris founded Dozen more than a decade ago on a stubborn idea: software should fit people, not the other way around. An engineer-turned-founder who’s built and led Nashville software companies for twenty years, he sets the vision, guards the craft, and stays fluent in both “techish” and human. His first engineering job was building for Nashville’s own rivals.com (acquired by Yahoo! Sports). Fitting, since he may be the world’s biggest sports nerd.

Jacob Lewis

Senior Software Engineer

Jacob is a full-stack craftsman with ten-plus years of turning concepts into shipped products. He builds custom software the way it should be built: carefully, end to end, and with the user in mind the whole way. Off the clock he runs long miles, plays music, and takes fantasy football far, far too seriously.

Chris Reising

Principal Software Engineer

Chris builds software the way high-stakes engineering demands: precise, dependable, no loose ends. He brings that exacting standard to Dozen clients every day, architecting clean systems that hold up under real-world weight. Rutgers-trained and deep in Java and data, he’s happiest when a thorny problem finally clicks into something elegant. When he’s not at the keyboard, he fights bears in the mountains of North Carolina.

Andrew Hunton

Principal Software Engineer

Andrew has spent more than a decade building full-stack software end to end, from React front ends to event-driven services on AWS. He’s also pushing where the craft is headed: he builds custom AI agents and tooling that make whole teams faster, and he’s mentored a lot of engineers into their best work along the way. Hand him a sprawling, multi-service problem and he’ll map it, simplify it, and ship it. Inspired by Steve Austin, his bionic reconstruction bill is incrementally approaching six million dollars.

Chris Yommer

Principal Systems Engineer

Chris has spent more than two decades keeping systems standing: cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and automation at every scale. He’s the deep foundation Dozen builds on, the engineer who designs the resilient, quietly elegant systems everything else depends on, and makes hard infrastructure look easy. Name a movie or show. Odds are he’s seen it and remembers every detail.

Clay Wittwer

Managing Partner, Engineering & Operations

Clay makes the trains run and the code hold up. He came up as an engineer and grew into the operator’s chair, pairing real build instinct with a manager’s eye to turn big ambitions into shipped, dependable work. If it has to scale, stay standing, and land on time, it goes through Clay. Off the clock he lives and breathes soccer. He’s a Nashville SC season-ticket holder who travels the country for youth soccer.

Techish?