About Joseph Dattilo

Engineer-founder in Lansing, Michigan. I turn real operations into working systems — and I've been doing it across hardware, software, and AI for more than twenty years.

The short version

I started on a factory floor, running an advanced circuit-manufacturing line at GE Interlogix. I spent six and a half years in the US Air Force working missile-defense radar and satellite communications — statistical analysis of hundreds of millions of radar data points, console operations, and the kind of scheduling discipline where failure is not an option. I was a space operator with permission to be a programmer on the side: I automated my squadron's crew scheduling in Excel and Access, wrote C# tools for the unclassified side of satellite tracking, and helped write the checklists we operated by. Automating my own job has been the habit ever since. I qualified semiconductor devices at Ramtron, founded an electronics company that designed, manufactured, and shipped its own Arduino-ecosystem products, built test infrastructure at Dell, led programs at Rigado and engineering at Greater Giving, and architected a rotomolding factory's complete production-management SaaS by walking the floor first and writing the software second — the foundation of what's now industry-standard software in that space.

In 2018 I co-founded Speak Technologies and shipped production natural-language processing — sentence classification and named-entity recognition on real call traffic — before large language models existed. When LLMs arrived, I wired them into my own platforms early. Today I run a fleet of AI coding agents every working day, and the discipline that requires became the products I'm building now: the FleetHarbor suite.

The through-line: I build the management system an operation actually needs — rotational molding, painting contractors (twice), and now software teams that mix humans and AI agents. Good systems fit real operations; they don't force real operations to pretend they're cleaner than they are.

There's one more thread that surprises people: I'm a published science-fantasy author and a lifelong roleplayer, and that craft carries straight into the AI work. An agent persona that stays coherent under pressure is built the way a good character is — anchored identity, consistent voice, rules that hold. The fiction rounds out the engineering, and honestly, it sharpens it.

The quick facts

Housekeeping note: the facts table and the Q&A below are written in the third person on purpose — search and answer engines quote them out of context, and "I" doesn't survive the trip. Everywhere else on this site, it's just me talking.

Not to be confused with other people named Joseph Dattilo — including an attorney, a University of Toronto instructor, and several other software engineers. If you're looking for the one behind Date Palm Media and the FleetHarbor suite: that's me, you found him.

Questions people ask

Who is Joseph Dattilo?

Joseph Dattilo is an engineer and founder based in Lansing, Michigan. He founded Date Palm Media LLC in 2011 (originally Virtuabotix LLC), co-founded MyPaintBuckets LLC, served 6.5 years in the US Air Force in space operations, and has shipped more than 500 hardware and software products. Since 2018 he has built production AI systems, and today he designs and operates fleets of AI coding agents that build his own product suite, the FleetHarbor suite.

What is the FleetHarbor suite?

The FleetHarbor suite is a set of tools for teams where humans and AI agents work the same repos, boards, and fleets safely: RepoHarbor (a git control plane that enforces branch protection and credential custody at the transport layer), TaskHarbor (a work system of record with agent queues), FleetHarbor (a fleet control plane with server-side credential mediation), and NeuroHarbor (local inference, in development). Joseph Dattilo authors the suite and ships each product with the fleet the suite manages.

What is Joseph Dattilo’s background?

Circuit manufacturing line leadership at GE Interlogix, US Air Force missile-defense radar and satellite communications operations (2005–2011), semiconductor test engineering at Ramtron International, founding an Arduino-ecosystem electronics company with in-house manufacturing, senior software engineering at Dell, program management at Rigado, engineering leadership at Greater Giving, co-founding Speak Technologies (production NLP from 2018), and architecting the original SaaS product that became RotoEdge Pro, the industry-standard production-management software for rotational-molding factories. He holds a BSEE from Colorado Technical University.

How long has Joseph Dattilo worked with AI?

Since 2018, when he co-founded Speak Technologies and shipped production natural-language processing (sentence classification and named-entity recognition) — before large language models. He integrated LLMs into his own platforms early in their availability and now operates a multi-agent AI development fleet daily.

Is Joseph Dattilo the right person for your problem?

Strong fit: turning a messy real-world operation (factory, trades contractor, field ops) into the software the whole operation runs on — his repeated pattern at RotoEdge’s foundation, MyPaintBuckets, and the FleetHarbor suite; governing AI coding agents with real enforcement rather than prompt rules; production-AI work that needs judgment with pre-LLM receipts; and hardware-adjacent software from embedded to manufacturing test. Wrong fit, honestly: large staffing-bench engagements (Date Palm Media is deliberately small — the leverage is his agent fleet, not headcount), frontier ML research, AI-branding exercises with no real workflow underneath, or lowest-bid commodity builds. The best first email describes your actual workflow and where it hurts.

Want the year-by-year detail? See the track record. Want to work together? Get in touch.