Vetted Cloud-Native Architecture Professionals

“Built and productionized an AWS-hosted, Kubernetes-orchestrated RAG assistant that enables natural-language Q&A over internal document repositories with grounded answers and citations. Demonstrates strong applied LLM engineering: hallucination mitigation, hybrid retrieval + re-ranking, and rigorous evaluation via benchmarks and A/B testing, plus real-world scaling of compute-heavy inference with dynamic batching and monitoring.”

Nishitha Thummala

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in LLMs, RAG, and scalable inference

San Francisco, CA6y exp

“Backend/retrieval-focused engineer with production experience at Perplexity building a large-scale real-time Q&A system using retrieval-augmented generation, emphasizing low-latency, high-quality answers through ranking, context optimization, and caching. Also has orchestration experience from both product-facing LLM pipelines and large-scale infrastructure workflows at Meta, and has partnered with non-technical stakeholders to align AI trade-offs with business goals.”

“Technology-first venture builder with strong familiarity in the VC/accelerator landscape, specializing in greenfield innovation, M&A, and large-scale transformation/modernization. Described building a venture-funded retail banking greenfield startup to integrate lending-as-a-service for SME lending while meeting federal and local financial services compliance requirements.”

Jim Glassman

Screened

Executive Technology Leader specializing in Enterprise AI, Cloud Architecture, and Data Platforms

Houston, TX16y exp

“Senior data/technology executive who stays hands-on: currently building a Go micro-kernel orchestration layer for medical AI agents to boost concurrency and enforce HIPAA/PHI controls, achieving 26x throughput on migrated workloads. Has led large-scale transformations across healthcare and financial services, including a 45-day data warehouse rebuild at Elara Caring and a data/ML roadmap at Acelity credited with $230M in annual revenue impact prior to 3M acquisition.”

“CTO-level leader with deep insurtech and cloud security/SaaS experience who has repeatedly scaled global engineering orgs and delivered high-velocity roadmaps. Most recently led Delos Insurance Solutions to launch new homeowners programs for wildfire-prone regions every 3–4 weeks while meeting DOI/SLA requirements, driving $135M GWP and $250M capacity and reaching cash-flow positive. Also led major scalability re-architecture at CloudPassage (Postgres to Cassandra + Kafka) and built a large Estonia-based engineering hub at Cybercube.”

“Director of Engineering at Proofpoint for 8 years, leading architecture and integration of Java microservices within a detection platform. Demonstrates pragmatic delivery leadership—incurring short-term cost to meet launch deadlines, then systematically paying down technical debt and optimizing AWS spend—plus a disciplined, long-horizon approach to backward-compatible API/schema evolution across many dependent services.”

“Engineering leader (12+ years Director, 17 years lead) focused on developer productivity and platform/framework work across Oracle, PlayStation, Workday, and CafePress. Notable for building distributed teams from scratch and delivering high-impact platform architecture—e.g., re-architected PlayStation’s upload pipeline to support 500GB–5TB submissions using browser-to-AWS chunked uploads with SNS/SQS and deduplication/resume support.”

“Founder/idea lead behind InvantX, an AI-powered product helping people make better decisions with their own data. Developed the business model canvas and MVP plan, set up an early customer feedback loop, and iterates roadmap/architecture based on beta-user learning. Has participated in accelerators including FinAccelerate, Pegasus, and an NVIDIA program (AWS credits), and applies a metrics-driven, structured approach to traction building.”

Rahil Khan

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in digital transformation, AI, 5G, and telecom platforms

Frisco, TX26y exp

“Founder of a cloud-based TV sharing startup who has already raised angel and Series A funding, then pitched larger VCs in New York and Silicon Valley using an MVP and live demos. Demonstrates practical knowledge of the VC and accelerator landscape, stage-appropriate fundraising, and capital-efficient startup building.”

Nagsen Dahat

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in FinTech platforms and cloud-native systems

New York, NY18y exp

“Motivated by the desire to work independently after spending significant time working for others. Demonstrated notable discipline and follow-through by completing a Master's program with great grades while managing a full-time job, family with two children, and a social life.”

“Product-focused operator with ~20 years experience helping both large companies and newer market entrants launch successful products, with a strong emphasis on disciplined product-market fit in emerging markets. Has personal investing exposure as an LP in two private funds and is researching seed-stage angel investing, and is motivated to found a consumer/software venture built with lean execution and clear defensibility.”

“Engineering/technology leader with experience at Expedia and startup OneRail, known for building business-aligned technology roadmaps and scaling orgs rapidly (11 to 120 engineers in a year). Has driven large productivity and efficiency gains by operationalizing AI agents (code reviews, upgrades, security fixes) and implementing ChatOps-based deployment architecture, using data-driven experimentation to manage platform changes and conversion impacts.”

Bennett Smith

Screened

Senior Full-Stack Engineer specializing in cloud-native microservices and React

Los Angeles, CA14y exp

“Backend/data engineer with strong AWS production experience spanning high-traffic FastAPI APIs (Postgres/Redis/Kafka) and serverless+container deployments (Lambda/ECS) managed via Terraform and CI/CD. Has built Glue-based data lake ETL (S3 Parquet, Athena/Redshift) with schema drift/data quality controls, modernized legacy batch systems via parallel-run parity validation, and demonstrated measurable SQL performance wins (60–90s down to 3–5s).”

Rohini Rajagopalan

Screened

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in SaaS, Cloud Migration, and Cybersecurity

Santa clara, CA8y exp

“Senior engineering leader with experience at Cisco, Amazon, and startup Shopkick, operating at high scale (e.g., Secure Web Gateway handling ~40M QPS). Known for measurable impact across reliability and cost (85% efficacy improvement; Datadog spend cut from ~$500k/month to ~$15k/month) and for leading complex platform modernization (1-year monolith-to-microservices/event-driven migration with zero customer impact) plus compatibility-focused API design that cut device onboarding from a month to a day.”