About — Sam Couch

Engineering and developer advocacy

I'm Sam Couch, a Senior Developer Advocate at Jack Henry. Before that, I was a Developer Advocate at IBM. Across those roles, I've worked with developers, startups, and financial institutions, helping people understand technology and put it to work.

That work includes hands-on engineering. At Jack Henry, I designed, built, and now operate AI-powered documentation search. I also led and designed self-service API onboarding, and built a documentation checker that I maintain across more than 50 API services and roughly 1,000 endpoints.

Developer advocacy adds another part of the job: listening to what people need, explaining technical choices, and working with the people who have to use the result.

Running a business

I built and run Gather Shot, a profitable event-photo collection business. I built it end to end: the software, the marketing site, and the business strategy. I handle customer acquisition, including SEO and visibility in AI-generated answers (AEO), along with pricing, customer support, and day-to-day operations.

There, the software and the business are my responsibility. A technical decision sits alongside questions about how customers find the product, what they'll pay for, and what it costs to keep it running.

Gather ShotEvent-photo collection

Working with investors

My consulting work has included company and technology research for private equity investment decisions. I've also helped review a software product's code and capabilities for a client's long-term contract evaluation.

That gives me a starting point for a broader role: bringing firsthand engineering knowledge to the questions people ask about a business. What does the product actually do? What would an improvement require? Which technical assumptions need to be tested?

The work I want next

I want to bring my experience in software, AI, developer advocacy, and running a business into investing, acquisitions, and improving companies. I want to help decide which opportunities are worth pursuing, what a business needs, and where to put time and money.

That means getting to know the company, its customers, and the people building it. It means looking beyond what a product promises to understand how it works, what customers value, and what it would take to change it. My technical background gives me a way into those questions, and developer advocacy has taught me to work through them with people who bring different experience.

I want to help choose the priorities and take responsibility for the work that follows. Sometimes that will mean building software or testing an AI application. Other times it will mean talking to customers, evaluating a business, or working with a team to turn a decision into something useful. Engineering stays part of what I bring, without defining the limits of the role.

I could see that work at a private equity firm, with a team buying and combining software businesses, or inside a company working with its investors to grow. The opportunity could involve evaluating an acquisition, working through a merger, or helping a portfolio company improve its product and operations.

A technical, business-minded Chief of Staff role could fit too: working closely with a founder, investor, or company leader to understand a problem, weigh the options, and carry important work through. What matters to me is having a real part in the decisions, as well as responsibility for the outcome.

I've written more about this in The Job I Want Next.