About me
Since graduating from GA in 2019, I was fortunate enough to be hired at a Denver-based conversational AI startup, Valyant AI. I was soon made responsible for an Angular2 "human-in-the-loop" SPA website that utilized socket.io and WebRTC to allow a remote person to monitor and interact with the end-user via the AI's voice in cases where intervention was needed. I also created a React Native demo app for a high-profile brand in the QSR space that allowed hands-free food ordering via your voice intended for call-ahead / pickup. Soon I was tasked with developing a customer-facing Portal that would provide metrics on the AI performance (e.g. completion %, Speed-of-Service, upsell success) and allowed review of each individual conversation. This project was built in React with Auth0 and a GraphQL backend. Finally, I most recently developed an Alexa-like React web interface with English/Spanish wakeword detection that communicated via graphQL/gRPC to a RAG-powered generative LLM solution to act as virtual assitant manager for new hires to ask questions and receive answers derived straight from the Employee Manuals (or any other custom knowledge-base).
In June 2019 I graduated from an intensive 12 week 450+ hour software engineering program at General Assembly where I learned to develop web apps primarily using the MERN stack but also wrote RESTful APIs in Java/Spring and Python/Flask. Prior to attending GA, I was most recently a project manager at Gaming Laboratories International, an industry-leading test lab in the internet gambling space.
I began my career at GLI as a Test Engineer after obtaining a E.E. degree from CSU, but soon was promoted to senior engineer and transferred to the newly formed internet gaming team. My skills were noticed after I took initiative to greatly improve our test results and archival processes by developing GLI Project Suite, a collection of C# .NET apps for Windows. This senior position took me to Italy, Tel Aviv, Jamaica, and Canada as I developed test suites, led on-site audit teams, and trained both regulators and new hires on all things iGaming. By the end of my time at GLI, I was responsible for 16 engineers around the world and together we certified 200+ gaming projects annually for major suppliers like Bally, Williams, FanDuel, and Pokerstars.
Despite continued success in this managerial role, I realized I had drifted away from the technical testing and software development aspects of the job I had truly loved which led me to pursue the SEI program at GA. Having been back on the technical side of things for a while, I am now open to some people management or mentor-related duties while I continue to code at a company where I can leverage my considerable experience to develop DRY, clean, & responsive full stack applications.
