Zach Lyon

Founder & Design Engineer · Williamsport, PA

• Designed and shipped Trail Sherpa, an offline-first trail navigation app for the Pennsylvania Wilds, on iOS, Android and the web in five months, directing AI coding agents across 84% of commits.
• Built GIS data pipelines (OpenStreetMap, USGS elevation) that cut trail mileage error from 8% to 3%, plus an admin dashboard used for grant reporting to the PA Wilds Center.
• Grew a community of 124 hikers who posted 122 trail condition reports in the soft launch.

Owner & Design Engineer · Reno, NV

• Led brand, web and app projects for Diamond Peak Ski Resort, Peppermill Resort, RSCVA, the City of South Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Microsoft Licensing.
• Ran the business end to end: sales, budgets, project management, design and front-end development.

Founder & Product Designer · Lake Tahoe, CA/NV

• Designed Citizen Science Tahoe and Mountain Rain or Snow with UC Davis TERC, Keep Tahoe Blue, Desert Research Institute, Lynker and UNR, partly funded by NASA ROSES Earth Science.
• Designed a dynamic survey builder with survey locking and annual versioning; volunteers logged about 25,000 observations.

Founder & Product Designer · Reno, NV

• Built white-label apps with Bluetooth-beacon walking tours and QR merchant deals for Visit Virginia City, Sierra State Parks Foundation, the Cities of Sparks and Hastings, Nebraska City and Better Spaces NYC.
• Destinations updated content in real time, with no app store releases.

Co-Founder & Product Designer · Reno, NV

• Grew from an in-house tool to $25K in monthly revenue; added 1,000+ customers in a single quarter and about 100 a month after.
• Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine (December 2010). Sold to my business partner in 2014.