Avi Flax

2025– Principal Tolerable Software

• Building new iPhone apps with Swift, SwiftUI, and AI coding agents (e.g. Claude Code)
• First product will be FolderTunes

2024–2025 Chief Software Architect Omne

• Built & refined the team & its strategy, processes, & culture
• Designed & built an ERP system for the manufacturing market
• Ended due to layoffs
• Tech: PostgreSQL, C#, Playwright, GitHub Actions, Kafka, Azure Cloud, Terraform, Bicep, Docker

2023–2024 Principal Software Engineer Trudy

• A limited-term contracting engagement
• Designed, implemented, & maintained:
  • An internal prompt engineering tool that enabled non-engineers to conduct rapid structured testing of many variations of LLM API invocations
  • A prototype SaaS product to enable non-experts to craft, test, & use LLM prompts with multiple LLM providers
• Tech: JavaScript, Google Apps Script, Google Workspace APIs, PostgreSQL, HTMX, Python, Django, Clojure

2022–2023 Staff Software Engineer Latacora

• Designed, implemented, & maintained:
  • A system that manages access to many AWS accounts via AWS SSO & Pulumi
  • A system for deploying multiple tools to many AWS accounts via Pulumi
  • A custom database for crucial business data & CLI tools for integrating the DB with tools such as Fibery & JIRA
• Ended due to layoffs
• Tech: Clojure, AWS, Pulumi, GitHub Actions, Docker

2020–2021 Senior Director of Technology Modern Energy

• Helped bootstrap a new Retail Energy Provider (REP) in Texas’ ERCOT market
• Automated wholesale energy trades for a few different markets via APX MarketSuite
• Helped bootstrap a new HVAC optimization startup by integrating with InfiSense & MelRok
• Tech: Clojure, Kafka, Airflow, Python, Docker, Pulumi, Google Workspace APIs

2017–2020 Principal Software Engineer Funding Circle

• Leveled-up documentation & knowledge sharing at a 250-person software product org
• Conceived, built, released, & maintained FC4, an open-source framework for authoring software architecture diagrams
• Ended due to layoffs (related to the COVID-19 pandemic)
• Tech: Clojure, Ruby, Kafka, GitHub Actions, Docker, C4 Model, Structurizr

2015–2017 Principal Software Architect Park Assist

• Rewrote a critical data pipeline using stream processing to reduce latency & improve reliability
• Designed, built, maintained, & operated stream data topologies for high-throughput & low-latency data processing
• Leveled-up engineering culture & practices, e.g. introduced infrastructure-as-code, immutable infrastructure, & continuous delivery
• Tech: Ruby, JRuby, Kafka, Kafka Streams, SQL Server, Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, CircleCI, Ansible, Datadog

2015   Timehop

• Rewrote a critical data pipeline using stream processing to reduce latency & improve reliability
• Designed & implemented:
  • An integration with Twilio for SMS-based signup
  • A tool for quickly processing billions of records
• Tech: Go (Golang), AWS, Redis, DynamoDB, Kinesis

2014   Thinkful

• Designed & implemented an event-driven system to automate Stripe subscription management
• Tech: Python, Django

2013–2014 CTO SFX Entertainment

• Led the design & implementation of an ambitious new-from-the-ground-up streaming music platform
  • With multiple teams: platform, Web, iOS, Android
• Recruited key team members
• Tech: Clojure, REST APIs, AWS

2005–2013   Arc90

• Wore many hats: developer, architect, tech lead, director, partner
• Worked with teams to design, build, & maintain advanced software platforms, including:
  • A Web/SOA insurance platform covering all key aspects of policy origination & management
  • A Web-based search engine & reference platform for engineers
  • A Web API at the heart of a new-from-the-ground-up news distribution platform for Reuters
• Conducted technical audits of clients’ acquisition targets
• Helped manage the business
• Managed client relationships
• Invested much time & effort in recruiting & retaining exceptional team members
• Started practice of regular company-wide code review
• Tech: ColdFusion, Groovy, Java, Python, XQuery, XSLT, XSD, Relax NG, eXist, MarkLogic, MongoDB, SQL Server, AWS

2001–2004   ADP

• Refactored, enhanced, & maintained a system for producing custom financial documents for on-demand printing
• Tech: Microsoft SQL Server, ColdFusion, XSLT, XSL-FO

2001   register.com

• Team lead position for large high-traffic auction site
• Responsibilities included designing, implementing, & maintaining features; reengineering site technology & architecture
• Created new internal tools & development procedures
• Tech: ColdFusion