Benton RobertsProduct Architect, Software Developer, and Scalability Engineer |
benton@bentonroberts.com
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Profile
Delivering AI-powered SolutionsI am a deeply experienced computer professional with the technical and communication skills to apply the latest 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.
Try a live demo of: The Daily Orbit
- 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 retrieval techniques
- provides a chatbot-style interface for gaining competitive insights
- built in under three weeks using rock-solid engineering practices.
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
- Deep AWS and other cloud provider knowledge
Deeper Expertise
Product Development
- Assess business and technical requirements among all 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
2024-2026
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
- Dartmouth College, Computer Science
- Columbia University, Mathematics