Staff Engineer · Backend · Distributed Systems · AI/LLM Integration · JVM · AWS

John Noecker Jr.
Staff engineer shipping AI systems end-to-end.

Staff-level software engineer with 15+ years building scalable, fault-tolerant systems end-to-end. Deep expertise in the JVM ecosystem (Java/Kotlin) with full-stack fluency across TypeScript, React, and Python. Specialized in designing and shipping production AI systems — LLM orchestration, multi-model pipelines, and end-to-end ML-backed products — on reliable, observable, cost-efficient architectures.

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
165K+ lines across 3 production AI-integrated systems
2,000+ tests — deterministic, coroutine, integration
5 AI image providers · 3 LLM backends · NLP pipelines
Spring Boot · Ktor · FastAPI · React · Tauri 2 · PixiJS
Published on PyPI · 14 academic papers · 2 U.S. patents

Recent projects

Arcanum (opens in new tab)

100K+ line desktop worldbuilding tool and cloud publishing platform for multiplayer game creators. Tauri 2 desktop app with 291 React components, 104 async Rust backend commands, and a 69-panel editor — with AI-assisted content creation woven throughout via five image providers, three LLM backends, and a text-to-speech pipeline.

TypeScript Rust React 19 Tauri 2 Zustand Claude API OpenAI Runware FLUX DeepInfra Cloudflare Workers D1 R2

Unified AI dispatcher integrating Runware FLUX, OpenAI GPT Image, and DeepInfra for image generation plus Claude, DeepSeek, and OpenAI for text — with automatic prompt enhancement, style templates, and background removal
Serverless cloud platform (Workers + D1 + R2) with AI proxy layer enforcing model allowlisting and per-user lifetime quotas; wildcard-subdomain publishing deploys each world as an independent showcase SPA
AI-powered lore authoring suite: gap analysis, consistency auditing, vision-based map analysis, relationship discovery, timeline inference, and cinematic video export via FFmpeg
Format-preserving YAML round-trip I/O retains comments and key ordering; content-addressed SHA-256 asset storage with lossy WebP re-encoding for publish

AmbonMUD (opens in new tab) Live demo (opens in new tab)

50K+ line production multiplayer game server built using AI-assisted development workflows (Claude Code, Codex). Coroutine-based tick engine, 10+ interconnected game systems, 196 command variants, and a React/PixiJS web client — architected for horizontal scaling from standalone to sharded deployment.

Kotlin Coroutines Ktor gRPC PostgreSQL Redis React 19 PixiJS 8 Prometheus Docker

Single-threaded coroutine engine eliminates concurrency bugs by design; tick-based architecture processes all game state transitions deterministically
Horizontal scaling: standalone mode handles hundreds of concurrent users; zone-based sharding over gRPC with Redis-backed event coordination supports near-unlimited capacity across container instances
10+ game systems — real-time combat with threat tables, behavior-tree NPC AI, procedural dungeons, crafting/gathering economy, guild halls, housing, quests, achievements, pets, and PvP
React/PixiJS web client with canvas-rendered battle scenes, structured GMCP protocol, and full UI; 500+ tests with deterministic time control and CI/CD via GitHub Actions

Mowen (墨紋) (opens in new tab)

Full-stack authorship attribution toolkit — clean-room Python successor to JGAAP (opens in new tab), the system used to identify J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith. 16K+ lines with 113 pluggable pipeline components, dual execution paths (traditional stylometry + neural embeddings), and 790+ tests. Published on PyPI as three packages.

Python FastAPI SQLAlchemy HuggingFace spaCy React 19 Zustand TanStack Query Docker PyPI

5-stage NLP pipeline (Canonicize → Extract → Cull → Histogram → Analyze) with 41 feature extractors, 26 distance functions, 21 classifiers, and a generic type-safe Registry[T] pattern — one file and one decorator to add a component
Dual execution paths: discrete stylometry (n-grams, POS tags, function words across 10 languages) and neural embeddings (HuggingFace transformers, SELMA instruction-tuned models, GNN over dependency parses, GPT-2 perplexity)
Authorship verification via General Imposters Method and Unmasking with dual-threshold calibration; style-change detection at paragraph boundaries; evaluation across EER, c@1, AUROC, and Brier score
Zero-dependency core with 12 optional extras gated behind lazy imports; FastAPI backend with background experiment execution; React frontend with real-time progress tracking and client-side metric computation

Stack

Tools and technologies across recent project work.

Languages

Kotlin, Java, TypeScript, Python, Rust, SQL

AI & ML

LLM integration (Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek/OpenRouter), image generation (Runware FLUX, GPT Image, DeepInfra), HuggingFace Transformers, embeddings, NLP pipelines, prompt engineering, text-to-speech

Backend

Coroutines, Ktor, FastAPI, Spring Boot, gRPC/Protobuf, Node.js, Jackson

Frontend

React 19, Tauri 2, PixiJS 8, Zustand, XY Flow, TipTap, Leaflet, Recharts, Vite, Tailwind CSS

Data

PostgreSQL, Redis, Cloudflare D1, SQLAlchemy, Exposed, HikariCP, Flyway

Infrastructure

AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB), Cloudflare Workers/D1/R2, Docker, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Prometheus, Grafana, CI/CD

Quality

JUnit, pytest, Vitest, deterministic testing, coroutine testing, integration suites

Timeline

Where I've been, and the kinds of problems I've owned.

Noecker & Associates

Staff Software Engineer (Consulting / Independent) · Aug 2020 — Present

Designed and delivered distributed backend and serverless systems using Spring Boot (Java, Kotlin) and Node.js (TypeScript), modernizing legacy monoliths into observable, maintainable architectures.
Led cloud migrations on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB) aligned with Well-Architected best practices, improving system reliability and reducing operational costs through serverless architecture and right-sized infrastructure.
Reduced deployment time by 60% through CI/CD improvements (Docker, Jenkins/GitHub Actions), and introduced observability-first practices (structured logging, metrics, alerting) to reduce mean time-to-diagnosis.
Independently designed and shipped three production applications with integrated AI systems across desktop, cloud, and multiplayer platforms — 165K+ LOC across Kotlin, TypeScript, Python, and Rust — with full ownership from architecture through deployment.
Built multi-provider AI pipelines spanning five image models and three LLM backends with prompt orchestration, style templating, and serverless proxying with per-user quota enforcement.
Implemented hybrid NLP systems combining classical stylometry with transformer embeddings and graph-based models for authorship attribution.

Enzyme

Senior Software Engineer · Jan 2019 — Jul 2020

Greenfield platform (TypeScript, React, Node.js) for FDA 510(k) regulatory data extraction.
Backend document processing with strong correctness, auditability, and compliance requirements.

Signifyd

Software Engineer · Aug 2016 — Dec 2018

~$100K/month recurring data cost reduction via vendor evaluation and integration.
Backend throughput and latency improvements via caching and performance tuning at scale.

Juola & Associates

Software Engineer · Aug 2010 — Jul 2016

Forensic authorship attribution systems for national security and litigation; methodologies passed Daubert admissibility challenges.
Peer-reviewed research, $1.6M grant contribution, and two U.S. patents co-authored.

EVLL (Applied Research)

Software Engineer · Aug 2010 — Oct 2014

Computational stylometry for high-profile cases including The Cuckoo's Calling (J.K. Rowling) and the Satoshi Nakamoto investigation.
Co-developed JGAAP, the open-source authorship attribution framework later succeeded by Mowen.

PROTEUS Technologies

Software Engineer · May 2009 — Aug 2010

Unified data processing system achieving 1000x reduction in processing time over ad-hoc workflows.

Education & credentials

Duquesne University

B.S. Computer Science · B.A. Mathematics

Graduated summa cum laude; valedictorian in Liberal Arts, Computer Science, and Mathematics.

Georgia Tech

Graduate coursework (CS)

Advanced coursework in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

AWS Certification

Solutions Architect – Associate

Well-Architected cloud design across Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB, and serverless patterns.

Patents

Authorship Technologies

U.S. Patents: US-11605055-B2, US-10657494-B2

Karat / Brilliant Black Minds

Senior Interview Engineer · 2019 — Present

3,500+ technical interviews conducted and 500+ engineers mentored; structured feedback and calibration across hiring pipelines for partners including Citi, Indeed, and Roblox.