Adam Barrett
Forward Deployed Engineer | Applied AI Engineer | Technical Lead
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About
Engineer-turned-product-manager with 12+ years shipping AI in production. Built three deployed AI systems at Stand Together using Python, the OpenAI API, and Claude: a custom Snowflake MCP server serving 800+ staff, a Copilot Studio agent automating executive reporting to the C-suite, and a policy GPT with MCP navigating AI deployment and content governance constraints. Federal delivery on a U.S.
Department of State contract (Section 508, AWS, agency stakeholder engagement). Technical founder of DC Dev Shop (4 years), embedding with clients to ship production software end to end.
Daily Claude
Code and Anthropic API user, pursuing an M.Eng. in AI/ML at GWU with coursework in Secure and Trustworthy AI (NIST AI RMF, MITRE ATLAS, GenAI governance) and cloud computing. DC-based, Public Trust held 2018, open to 25% in-office and 25 to 50% travel.
Experience
Senior Product Manager, AI & Engineering at Stand Together (2023-07 – 2026-04)
- Built a production Snowflake MCP server and GPT-4 interface in Python and Streamlit, integrating Iterable, Segment, Sprinklr, and Salesforce data, enabling 800+ staff to query campaign performance in plain language; reduced time-to-insight 60-70% and analytics dependency ~40%, idea to MVP in 60 days.
- Ran a structured evaluation framework: deployed the MVP to 10 power users, collected structured feedback via survey, and iterated on system prompts and output formatting before full launch to 30 active marcomms users.
- Built a Microsoft Copilot Studio agent reading team member's OneDrive, Teams, Outlook, and Calendar to auto-draft bi-weekly reports, saving 9 team members 1-2 hours each per week, with aggregated reports reaching leadership.
- Built and demoed a public-facing policy GPT with a custom MCP, applying content governance and AI deployment risk judgment when legal raised concerns, demonstrating safety-conscious decision-making in a high-stakes communication environment.
- Implemented the Figma MCP with Claude Code across the product team: wrote Confluence documentation, led UX and engineering knowledge-sharing sessions, and established repeatable Figma-to-code deployment patterns aligned to existing style guides.
- Led a 6-month technical debt remediation alongside ongoing commitments: built a C-suite decision framework, secured executive buy-in, and delivered 35% faster design-to-deployment with reduced QA dependency.
Senior Software Engineer at Flatiron School (2021-12 – 2022-10)
- Led technical execution of Flatiron School's transition from in-person to fully remote learning, enabling thousands of students to access technical education regardless of location.
- Shipped scalable platform features supporting remote-first delivery, partnering with product, design, and curriculum teams to build and iterate on the digital learning experience under tight timelines.
- Established reusable component standards and design-system conventions that improved delivery speed and consistency across distributed, asynchronous engineering teams.
Managing Director & Lead Engineer at DC Dev Shop (2017-07 – 2021-11)
- Founded and ran a product and engineering consultancy for 4 years, embedding with clients to diagnose business problems, architect solutions, and ship production software end to end, the forward-deployed model.
- Standardized delivery across engagements with reusable component libraries, starter repos, and repeatable architecture patterns, including a major HubSpot CMS migration for Special Olympics.
- Coordinated distributed systems with offshore engineering teams across time zones, owning architecture, quality, timelines, and C-suite stakeholder relationships.
Senior Software Engineer at U.Group (2018-10 – 2019-03)
- Lead developer on a 12-person team building and redesigning the U.S. Department of State's flagship website, Section 508 compliant, AWS-hosted, integrated into the existing federal front-end library.
- Built 6 reusable page templates powering 60+ new pages and wrote a Lando scripting solution for junior-dev onboarding that became a repeatable deployment pattern for the team.
- Met directly with State Department staff bi-weekly on-site and reduced issue resolution time ~90% by overhauling automated testing and development workflows.
Development Manager at Bluetext (2016-12 – 2017-07)
- Development lead on complex distributed systems with offshore teams across time zones, setting architecture standards across concurrent client engagements; collaborated with internal design, UX, and product teams to deliver custom web platforms for enterprise clients.
- Led concurrent client builds on Google Cloud Platform, enforcing development best practices, code-review standards, and front-end quality across HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP.
Developer at Targeted Victory (2016-01 – 2016-09)
- Built and maintained mission-critical platforms supporting high-visibility political and advocacy campaigns.
Developer at AgencyQ (2015-03 – 2015-09)
- Lead developer on open-source CMS platform builds for agency clients, contributing to open-source projects.
Education
Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning – George Washington University (2027)
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) in Economics – Appalachian State University