What began as weekend workshops in a riverside warehouse has become one of the most respected places to learn modern software engineering.
Students start by analyzing real codebases the way ecologists read a watershed — mapping flows, bottlenecks, and points of force.
Projects are shipped in tight weekly cycles. Each new feature must feel like it belongs in the system — graceful, resilient, and efficient.
Clean, maintainable code is non-negotiable. We train engineers to write software that remains beautiful and understandable for years after it is written.
Started with 11 students in a borrowed warehouse.
Launched first cohort of the famous 14-week River Program. 97% placement rate.
Opened second campus in Portland and released our open-source curriculum.
5,200 alumni working at the most demanding technology companies in the world.
Former principal engineer at Stripe. 13 years building distributed systems.
Ex-Netflix. Author of "The Resilient Back-end". Passionate about observable systems.
Previously at Figma. Teaches students how clean interfaces drive cleaner code.
Helped place 740 engineers in elite engineering roles over the past 6 years.