James Houston

Senior AI and Full-Stack Engineer focused on building products from early prototypes to high-concurrency systems. Experienced in launching AI agent features, scaling core application platforms, and delivering reliable software for both fast-moving startups and enterprise teams. Pragmatic developer who aligns technical decisions directly with product impact and business timelines.

Senior Software Engineer - Koantek

(2024-10)

• Built and scaled production AI platforms from early prototypes to high-concurrency production systems capable of handling real-time streaming and high-volume concurrent user sessions.
• Designed and implemented context-aware agent workflows and RAG pipelines, managing the end-to-end ingestion, chunking, and vector search strategy to ensure strict source citation and prevent hallucinations.
• Managed Google Cloud infrastructure, implementing event-driven, autoscaling architectures that handled heavy traffic spikes while maintaining strict startup budget constraints.
• Developed high-throughput APIs and middleware featuring WebSockets/SSE streaming, aggressive caching, rate-limiting, and deep observability, while securing regulated data via strict IAM controls and encrypted storage.
• Partnered directly with leadership in a fast-paced startup environment, making key architectural trade-offs to reliably deliver stable software against tight deadlines.

Senior AI / Full Stack Engineer (Co-Founder) - Sigma AI

(2021-02 - 2024-09)

• Owned full-stack development for a flagship B2B operations data processing platform, building the Next.js frontend and FastAPI microservices to consolidate fragmented client data and automate operational workflows.
• Developed enterprise RAG systems and semantic search tools using LangChain, LlamaIndex, and Pinecone vector databases with metadata filtering to deliver secure, context-aware AI insights.
• Modernized the core infrastructure for the Firm Prospects Legal Intelligence platform, replacing legacy search with an ElasticSearch cluster on AWS, optimizing Postgres schemas, and introducing gRPC for low-latency service communication.
• Transitioned legacy monolithic applications into fault-isolated microservices by designing serverless architectures on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, ECS), containerizing components with Docker, and establishing CI/CD via GitHub Actions.

Senior Full Stack Engineer - Vived Learning

(2018-05 - 2020-12)

• Built immersive, browser-based 3D web interfaces and real-time simulations using Babylon.js and Three.js for interactive visual learning experiences.
• Developed the core web application using React and TypeScript, transitioning components to modern functional architectures to improve frontend maintainability and type safety.
• Implemented serverless backend services using AWS Lambda to handle application logic, while managing media storage and high-speed asset delivery via AWS S3.
• Refactored legacy codebases to enforce consistent design patterns, significantly reducing technical debt and shortening subsequent feature development cycles.

Full Stack Engineer - Atlassian

(2016-10 - 2018-03)

• Developed core UI components and frontend workflows, focusing on reducing rendering latencies and improving performance.
• Built full-stack SaaS features and training platforms using Vue.js, Node.js, and PostgreSQL across AWS and Azure environments.
• Collaborated with senior engineers to resolve technical debt, refine component libraries, and scale backend APIs.

Software Engineer Intern - Atlassian

(2016-02 - 2016-09)

• Developed features for customer and merchant dashboards, refactoring database queries and API endpoints to improve page responsiveness.
• Participated in sprint planning, daily standups, and code reviews to deliver scoped features on time.

B.S. - Computer Science - University of North Texas (2011 - 2015)