Vetted XML Professionals

Peter Gluck

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Principal Software Engineer specializing in scalable, secure multi-platform systems

La Crescenta, CA14y exp

“Engineering leader and former CTO/Disney|ABC engineering manager who built white-label mobile app architecture that supported a branded app and successful exit, and later scaled Disney Channel brand app teams across iOS/Android/web and major OTT platforms. Led kid-safety architecture for DisneyNOW (“Junior mode” with PIN) and partnered with product/legal on COPPA compliance, emphasizing maintainable tech choices and strong execution processes.”

“Senior Engineering Manager with large-scale platform/API ownership at eBay, leading a globally distributed team and redesigning Order public APIs used by external developer ecosystems at ~800M requests/day, delivering 84% performance gains and reducing compute by ~300 VMs. Also led Google CRES ETL migration work on GCP, creating reusable Python libraries to standardize configuration across 10 integrations and improve developer productivity.”

Brian Sanders

Screened

Senior Backend Engineer specializing in GenAI, LLMs, and scalable data pipelines

Chicago, IL12y exp

“Backend/ML platform engineer from Snapsheet who owned production Python services and data pipelines for insurance claims, including an AI document classification/summarization FastAPI service on ECS/Fargate processing 1M+ documents/year. Strong in AWS infrastructure (Terraform, CI/CD, secrets/IAM, autoscaling), Glue/PySpark ETL with schema evolution controls, and legacy SAS-to-microservices modernization with safe, feature-flagged rollouts and measurable performance wins.”

“Engineering leader who built and delivered an IoT smart-spaces platform for the self-storage and smart-living domains, translating customer requirements into architecture, capability maps, and a multi-milestone roadmap. Personally stood up missing AI/ML capabilities (including churn prediction) using Databricks (Delta Lake/MLflow), enabling follow-on features like energy optimization and security/anomaly detection. Scaled an org from 20 to 80+ with disciplined Agile planning (Jira Advanced Roadmaps/Confluence) and strong executive/customer-facing leadership during high-stakes customer commitments.”

“Mission-driven founder at the pre-seed stage with a fully developed business plan, validated concept, and defined business model. They demonstrate strong early-stage startup judgment through demand validation, scalability assessment across repeatable use cases and multi-city expansion, and informed familiarity with VC, studio, and accelerator pathways while preparing for first outside capital.”

“Software engineer at Intel who owns a production Go/Kubernetes backend for supply-chain transparency and end-to-end hardware integrity verification in a hybrid cloud setup (AWS control plane + Azure data plane). Also built and shipped an AI agent workflow for real-estate due diligence that turns raw Excel spreadsheets into structured investment outputs and auto-generated PowerPoint insights using LangGraph, with strong emphasis on verification, observability, and reliability guardrails.”

Vigynesh Bhatt

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in backend, cloud, and ML systems

Salt Lake City, UT4y exp

“Software engineer with experience across Goldman Sachs, BYU Broadcasting, Juniper Networks, and an edtech startup (Doubtnut), spanning data migrations, AWS-based media backends, and microservices observability. Built a Redis/ElastiCache caching layer in front of DynamoDB/S3 to improve media delivery latency and cost, and created an SEO indexing automation tool using the Google Search Console API that saved ~15–30 person-hours per day.”

“Engineering leader (Director of Development) with hands-on cloud and product experience who builds business-aligned technology roadmaps and scales teams. Delivered an enterprise cloud-migration enabler at UHG by implementing AD authentication and Terraform-based IaC for custom VM images while meeting 90-day InfoSec patch/rotation requirements, and drove a 20% lift in user consumption/retention by designing an interactive branded media portal experience for Sunkist.”

Yernar Smagulov

Screened

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in autonomous vehicle operations and test automation

Foster City, CA4y exp

“Hands-on Python/IoT engineer with experience spanning research labs and autonomous vehicles (Zoox), focused on making data/decision-support systems reliable in production. Has deployed and Dockerized Python tools with pinned dependencies, built sensor-based on-prem data collection systems (aquafeed evaluation), and troubleshot telemetry issues down to a failing switch port using logs, multimeter checks, and network diagnostics.”

“Built and shipped production AI systems spanning customer support automation at Uber, privacy-preserving federated health modeling on iOS, and an open-source semantic search layer for Postgres. Stands out for combining strong LLM/product instincts with rigorous eval design, measurable production impact, and zero-to-one execution across backend, mobile, and developer infrastructure.”