Richard is an IBM brat who started programming in the mid-1970s. After a brief flirtation with pure math, he moved to Seattle in 1989, where he worked in the software industry, specializing in digital signal processing. In 2004, he joined visualization pioneer Tableau, where he worked on connectivity, query compilation, and performance, including being the lead developer for the Tableau Data Engine. He tried to retire in 2019 but spent so much time hacking on DuckDB that Hannes tracked him down and invited him to join the DuckDB Labs team, where he focuses on temporal data processing.