Benton Roberts

Product Architect, Software Developer, and Scalability Engineer

benton@bentonroberts.com
bentonroberts.com
646.717.3708

Profile

Delivering AI-powered Solutions

I am a deeply experienced computer professional with the technical and communication skills to apply cutting-edge digital technology to any organization’s bottom line - including machine learning and large language models. With more than 20 years of industry experience, I combine the hardcore technical expertise of an old-school sysadmin, the state-of-the-art practices of an AI-accelerated programmer, and the business pragmatism of a startup veteran.

Live demo with source code available...

I have built a demonstration app which:
  • solves a difficult business problem for a household name company;
  • aggregates information from multiple sources in a sophisticated ingest pipeline;
  • enhances the dataset using battle-tested information retreival techniques;
  • provides a chatbot-style interface for exploring and attacking the problem; and...
  • was built in a single week using rock-solid engineering practices.
If you are interested in hiring me, please reach out by email. I’ll walk you through the whole system, answer any questions, show you the code, and even provide temporary access.

Hands-On Skills

Software

  • Full-stack, AI-driven Software Development: frontend, backend, and native apps
  • Human + AI tool development: natural language exploratory interfaces, driven by retrieval-augmented generation
  • Experience with the standard data science toolchain: Pandas, PyTorch, Jupyter, et al.
  • Comfortable with different coding styles: imperative / compositional; object-oriented; functional
  • Preferences for a fast text editor + terminal over an IDE, and for pragmatism over perfection

Systems

  • Expert application and systems troubleshooting
  • Fluent with modern DevOps, continuous integration, deployment techniques
  • Able to work productively in a highly regulated environment

Scalability

  • Expert in managing containers and orchestration at scale: machine-learning workloads; ETL; legacy and stateful apps
  • Expert in monitoring and management techniques
  • Currently serving as Managing Director of Cloud Services

Deeper Expertise

Product Development

  • Assess business and technical requirements among technical and business stakeholders
  • Negotiate a common shape for company applications within large firms
  • Perform pre-sales and post-sales technical support and product integration

Enterprise Operations

  • Implement app deployment workflows based on immutable artifacts
  • Deep-dive troubleshoot into a wide range of problems, from the browser to the kernel
  • Develop flexible monitoring and tracing solutions driven by constantly evolving requirements and standards

Cloud Workload Management

  • Containerize applications correctly, and consolidate virtual hosts
  • Identify and improve application resource usage
  • Develop container-level and cluster-level autoscaling plans for Kubernetes or ECS

Recent Experience

2024-present

Managing Director, Cloud Services, Elevate, Inc. (Denver / Phoenix / D.C.)

  • Building AI-enhanced solutions to support eDiscovery, compliance, and other legal services.
  • Working on product development, deep coding, plus infrastructure and identity management.
  • Non-technical duties include technical pre-sales / marketing, and leadership / mentoring.

2022–2024

Deputy CTO, Redgrave Strategic Data Solutions (San Francisco / Denver / D.C.)

  • Designed and implemented bespoke software solutions to support legal operations.
  • Technical duties included a mix of case work, infrastructure development, and product development.
  • Non-technical duties included vendor vetting and management, technical pre-sales / marketing, and leadership / mentoring.

2011–2021

Principal Staff Cloud Engineer, Medidata Solutions, Inc.  (New York / San Francisco)

  • Designed and implemented several different deployment mechanisms based on evolving business requirements. Adopting container-based deployment system saved the company 5-figures per month in AWS costs through increased server density.
  • Played a key role in managing the company’s cloud footprint, as it grew from several VMs to several thousand, in a highly regulated industry
  • Involved in negotiating and evangelizing company technical standards, from post-IPO to recent company acquisition.

Education