Justin Lanford - Software Developer

Overview

Senior Software/AI engineer who has built production systems across full-stack architectures and safety-focused AI applications. Experience includes designing RAG pipelines with retrieval evaluation, building stateful LLM agent workflows, and shipping web features using React/Node and Python services. Previously developed performance-critical backend and realtime features for Microsoft Teams and migrated legacy UI to maintainable React code.

Technical skills

SQL

TypeScript

Python• Middle • 10y+

JavaScript• Senior • 10y+

Node JS• Senior • 10y+

PHP• 10y+

Python

Django

FastAPI

Node JS

Nest.JS• 7y+

PHP

Symfony

Databases

Databricks

MySQL• 10y+

PostgreSQL• 10y+

Redis• 7y+

Pinecone• 3y+

AI/ML

AI Agents

Semantic Search

Spark

Embeddings• 3y+

LangChain• 3y+

LLM• 3y+

RAG• 3y+

Reranking• 3y+

Claude

LangGraph

Prompt Engineering

Together AI

Frontend

ESLint

JQuery

Prettier

Sass

Vue.js

React.js• 10y+

GraphQL• 7y+

Next.js• 7y+

Redux• 7y+

Webpack• 7y+

DevOps

Git

CI/CD• 10y+

Azure• 7y+

Docker• 7y+

Rest API• 7y+

WebSockets• 7y+

AWS• 3y+

Datadog• 3y+

GCP• 3y+

gRPC• 3y+

Terraform• 3y+

Kubernetes

Vector

Cybersecurity

Polaris

QA

Cypress

Mocha

Pytest

Postman• 10y+

Jest• 7y+

Timeline

Senior Software Engineer • Senior

Together AI • Full-Time

Mar 2025 to Present 1 Year 6 Months In office

Built a support ticket automation platform using a multi-step AI agent workflow modeled as a stateful LangGraph. Integrated tools and typed schemas to connect Zendesk/Jira ticket data, internal REST APIs, and Slack-based human escalation. Implemented retry and evaluation logic with LLM-as-judge plus rule checks, and developed a fullstack operator UI with streaming runs via FastAPI/Node backend. Optimized cost/latency by routing simpler sub-tasks to smaller models and reserving Sonnet for higher-reasoning steps.

Python

LangGraph

Claude

Vector

React.js

Rest API

LLM

Slack

Next.js

FastAPI

Prompt Engineering

Zendesk

Jira

AWS

Kubernetes

Redis

Node JS

Senior Software Engineer • Senior

Hippocratic AI • Full-Time

Feb 2023 to Feb 2025 2 Years In office

Designed and implemented a RAG pipeline for a patient-facing voice AI agent using LangChain and Pinecone to ground responses in retrieved clinical sources. Built document ingestion and chunking with metadata for retrieval filtering by call type, and added hybrid retrieval with a relevance gate to escalate to human nursing when confidence is low. Integrated RAG into a multi-model verification flow to reduce unsupported statements, and created regression testing with clinician-reviewed datasets plus CI checks for retrieval and faithfulness.

Pythonsince 2023

Rest API

gRPC

LangChain

GCP

Terraform

CI/CD

Embeddings

Pinecone

Reranking

RAG

Datadog

LLMsince 2023

AWSsince 2023

Software Engineer • Middle

Microsoft • Full-Time

Apr 2019 to Feb 2023 3 Years 10 Months In office

Delivered meeting scheduling and calendar synchronization features for the Microsoft Teams web client, integrating Outlook/Exchange/Teams calendars via internal Graph APIs. Built React frontend flows with optimistic updates and a Node.js/TypeScript backend for asynchronous background syncing. Reworked meeting and chat search performance by replacing linear scans with indexed search, added pagination and debounced queries, and built real-time meeting reminder and mention notifications using WebSockets with telemetry. Improved React accessibility to WCAG 2.1 AA with ARIA and keyboard navigation, and migrated legacy admin UI panels from jQuery to typed React.

JavaScript

React.js

Next.jssince 2019

Redux

Webpack

Node JS

Nest.JS

Rest APIsince 2019

GraphQL

WebSockets

Redissince 2019

Azure

Docker

Jest

Full Stack Developer • Middle

Closeloop Technologies • Full-Time

Jun 2016 to Mar 2019 2 Years 9 Months In office

Developed a cloud-native ETL and marketing analytics data visualization platform with Node.js backend pipelines and a React dashboard for campaign managers. Built RESTful APIs with PHP and Symfony for authentication, session management, and CRUD backed by MySQL. Created an end-to-end recruitment automation workflow with a React scheduling/review UI and a Node/Express backend integrating calendar services to reduce scheduling cycle time. Improved client performance through frontend refactoring, and supported reporting and user management via a PHP-based admin dashboard with database query optimizations.

Node JSsince 2016

React.jssince 2016

PHP

JavaScriptsince 2016

MySQL

PostgreSQL

CI/CDsince 2016

Salesforce

Postman

Trello