Sangmin Lee

The arc

I started coding in 1996, age 12, picking up Visual Basicwhile sitting in on my father’s MIS coursework during his MBA. JavaScript followed around 1998. The engineering DNA isn’t a pivot. It’s the foundation.

In 2008 I co-founded an IT consulting company with a college buddy and ran it for nearly seven years. The company pulled me away from full-time production code into stakeholder work, MVP scoping, Agile/SCRUM delivery, and release management. I picked up a masters in computer science in the middle of it. By the time we wound the company down in 2015, I was hungry to be back in the codebase full-time.

That’s the year I joined Complex Networks, a top-tier US digital media publisher. Partnered with their BI team across the sister-site portfolio (millions of monthly visitors per site), led the frontend revamp on three sister sites single-handedly before they consolidated into one platform. That’s where I learned what classic Google organic SEO actually looks like at publisher scale: schema, crawl-budget, internal linking, page speed, ranking signals. A decade before AI search was a category.

After Complex I spent five years deep in full-stack at Verdocs (e-signature platform, library-first architecture, framework-agnostic embeds). Then four-plus years as a Senior Research Scientist at Perspecta Labs (which became Peraton Labs after the 2021 acquisition), building Cesium-based 3D geospatial visualization for federal contracts. Compliance-heavy environments. Real engineering rigor.

I founded Mindcraftor in 2025 (AI SaaS for idea generation, scaled to early adoption then shut at zero MRR, a useful failure). I founded RankLabs later in 2025 because every existing tool in the AI visibility space was a marketer’s tool. They didn’t extract @graph the way AI engines parse it. So I built the infrastructure I wished existed, and now every client engagement I deliver runs through it.

I currently consult through SAE.SO on two parallel tracks: ongoing A/B testing / experimentation work for a Fortune-1000 health & wellness brand (300+ tests and counting since 2021), and a senior full-stack engagement on a separate end-client (2026-02 onwards). The experimentation muscle stays current. I’m still shipping CRO/MVT in production every week.

The Search Visibility Engineering practice is my primary independent practice outside SAE.SO. I take a small number of engagements per quarter(currently 4). US brands, mid-market and Fortune-1000 tier. Both SEO and AEO. I don’t take on engagements I can’t ship myself.