About us

Meet us

A studio, not a software factory.

We started Aeris Labs because we'd had enough of two things: work that didn't care, and people who didn't mean it.

Somewhere, the tech world decided “good enough” was good enough. Cookie-cutter sites. Clients ghosted. Jargon poured over the gaps where substance should be. We watched it become normal. We wanted no part of it.

So we started a studio to do the opposite: pair serious engineering with real storytelling, and refuse to ship anything we wouldn't be proud to put our name on. Craft instead of commodity. Plain talk instead of hype. And one stubborn conviction under all of it: the organizations doing the most good deserve work as good as they are.

We're proudly for-profit. We have rent and livelihoods, same as anyone, and we won't pretend otherwise. But we choose our clients the way we'd hope they'd choose us: for what they stand for, not only for what they can spend.

And we hold ourselves to the standard we sell, even when it's humbling. For a long stretch, this very website was the neglected thing we warn our clients about. We were so busy building for everyone else that our own shop went last. We fixed it. We'd rather tell you the truth than polish a myth.

The team

The people behind the work

Rob Hughes

Founder & Technology Visionary

Rob has spent 25+ years on tech’s harder problems, across enterprise, nonprofit, and government. He helped pioneer the Wi-Fi camera industry and built the video technology behind myQ, an app used by more than 12 million people. When the tools he needed didn’t exist, he built them. AerisForge, the engine this very site runs on, is his.

He’s known for bridging creativity and code: big-picture architecture with obsessive care for the small stuff. But the thing that actually sets him apart is empathy. Rob is active in his own church community, and he treats the human element as the most powerful tool in the kit. Great technology isn’t just smart. It’s built for people.

Julie Patterson

Experience Designer & Digital Strategist

Julie spent over a decade as a marketing leader at The Salvation Army, one of the largest nonprofits on earth, and has worked with leading agencies and as an independent strategist. She knows mission-driven work from the inside, because she’s lived it.

Her craft spans copywriting, brand voice, creative strategy, audience development, and crisis communications, from email and SEO to paid and organic social. At the center of all of it sits one test: if it can’t be done with kindness and honesty, is it worth doing at all?

JT Taylor

Solutions Architect & .NET/Oracle Guru

A decorated U.S. Marine veteran and founder of TaylorMade Software, JT is the person you want when it absolutely has to work. He came up through electronics and cryptography for the U.S. government, finished graduate work in mathematics, and cut his teeth in software as an actuarial programmer.

Today he’s the “.NET/Oracle guru,” a certified Snowflake specialist who’s led developer user groups, lectured at industry events, and taught advanced technology at the college level. Deep systems, done right.

You've met us. We'd like to meet you.

Tell us what you're building. In a free thirty-minute conversation, we'll learn your goals, share what we see, and lay out a few honest next steps. No pressure, no canned pitch. If we're a fit, we'll show you how. If we're not, we'll point you somewhere better.

Start a conversation chat@aerislabs.org