Elijah Munn

Forward Deployed Engineer — Geospatial, AI & Urban Analytics

Profile

Full-stack engineer with a computational-urbanism background who builds and deploys data-driven, geospatial software end-to-end — from map-data pipelines to the interfaces people actually use. Equal parts builder and client-facing problem-solver: repeatedly brought in for a narrow task and grown into owning the defining projects. Strongest in forward-deployed work — embedding with users and clients to turn messy real-world problems into shipped tools. Independently building Murmur (murmuralabs.com), an urban planning tool that models cities at multiple scales using agent-based modeling and spatial data science.

Experience

Senior Consultant, Urban Analytics & Software Development Aretian Urban Analytics & Design

Dec 2023 — Present · Boston, MA (remote)
  • Sole full-stack engineer on City Digital Twin (cdt.cat) — a geospatial intelligence platform for urban analysis and spatial decision-making covering 5,000+ census sections across Catalunya (neighborhood → municipality → comarca → province).
  • Built end-to-end: backend data pipelines integrating housing, cadastral, economic (INE census), and mobility data; and the frontend letting planners, policymakers, and researchers query, visualize, and compare across scales.
  • Produced the product's visual identity — logo, brand, and all media. Delivered for the Torras Family Foundation and Barcelona Global.
  • Stack: Next.js · TypeScript · deck.gl · Supabase (Postgres) · Vercel.

Frontend Developer → DevOps Engineer Public Interest Tech Lab, Harvard Kennedy School

Sep 2020 — Present · Cambridge, MA
  • Hired for a single basic website; grew into the engineer "uniquely responsible for the success of the lab's defining projects" — owning frontend, UX, infrastructure, and deployment end-to-end under Prof. Latanya Sweeney (data-privacy pioneer, former FTC CTO).
  • fbarchive — complete frontend (React) and design/media for the platform housing Facebook's internal documents for collaborative research and curation.
  • JoinU — complete frontend (React Native) and design for the university mobile app driving physical activity through social features.
  • MyDataCan — contributed to the user-controlled personal-data platform (data encryption, iOS/Android apps).

Founder / Independent Developer munn.studio

2018 — Present · San Francisco, CA
  • Independent web-design studio — design and build sites and apps for clients and passion projects, bringing craft and visual polish to every interface.

Projects

murmur.murmuralabsDesign & Development · 2026

An urban-foresight platform that splits cities into hexagonal cells carrying 100+ metrics across demographics, housing, health, mobility and equity — letting planning teams fork policy scenarios, model agent-based outcomes, and see who benefits before decisions unfold.

deck.gl · Mapbox · H3 · Agent-based

lightflowFull-stack · 2026

An audio-reactive lighting director that separates music into stems, uses an attention model to pick the focus of each frame, and lets Claude compose bar-level light patterns — driving real DMX hardware and a live Three.js visualizer.

Three.js · Web Audio · Claude API · Python

medialab-redesignDesign & Development · 2026

A full redesign of the Media Lab's web presence — scraping 600+ live records into a typed content layer and presenting people, projects and events through a 3D-accented, cross-linked editorial system.

Next.js · Three.js · GSAP · Data

aretian.city-digital-twinCreative Development · 2026

An urban-intelligence platform that fuses building, transit, demographic and environmental data across whole regions — rendering millions of buildings with deck.gl and Mapbox, scoring walkability and 15-minute-city access, and modelling policy scenarios in real time.

deck.gl · Mapbox · PostGIS · Next.js

cookflow-v2Design & Development · 2024

The next iteration of Cookflow — a faster, cleaner recipe experience that walks you through cooking step by step, with scalable ingredients and a focused, distraction-free interface.

Next.js · Web App · Design · Cooking

cookflow-v1Design & Development · 2020

The original Cookflow — a clean recipe app for collecting and cooking from, stripping away the clutter and ad-noise of a typical food blog to get you from list to plate.

Next.js · Web App · Design · Cooking

Skills

Languages
TypeScript / JavaScript, Python, SQL, GLSL
Web & Frameworks
Next.js, React, React Native, Svelte, shadcn/ui, Three.js, Framer Motion
Maps & Geospatial
deck.gl, D3.js, Mapbox GL, H3, PostGIS, Turf.js
AI & Modeling
LLM application development, agent-based modeling, generative AI integration (OpenAI, Anthropic)
Backend & Infra
Supabase (Postgres), spatial data pipelines, REST APIs, Vercel, Google Cloud, AWS

Education

  • M.S., City and Technology (MaCT) Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya / IAAC (Barcelona)2021
  • B.A., Architectural Studies Boston University2018