John Torgerson

E

Senior Software Engineer

EliseAl

Jul 2022 - Current (4 years 4 months)

Owned and built backend systems for EliseAI's LLM-powered conversational AI platform used by enterprise customers to automate workflows, search knowledge bases, and answer natural-language queries at scale. Designed and implemented Python APIs using FastAPI and PostgreSQL to support real-time chat, semantic search, and structured data retrieval across millions of customer records in a multi-tenant SaaS environment. Built event-driven pipelines with Celery, Redis, and Kafka to ingest, normalize, and continuously update customer data, conversation logs, and knowledge-base content. Implemented Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using Azure OpenAI, vector embeddings, and pgvector, enabling accurate and explainable AI responses over proprietar

Senior Software Engineer

Plaid

Jan 2019 - Jun 2022 (3 years 6 months)

Built Python APIs and PostgreSQL data models supporting financial data flows for millions of end users. Reduced database load by ~40% through query tuning, indexing, and Redis-based caching layers. Designed Kafka-based event pipelines processing tens of millions of financial events per day with strong reliability guarantees. Created Python tooling and React dashboards for monitoring, debugging, and replaying transaction workflows. Added distributed tracing, metrics, and structured logging to improve production observability and incident response. Participated in architecture reviews to standardize API evolution and schema migration practices across teams.

Software Engineer

Thoughtworks

May 2016 - Dec 2018 (2 years 8 months)

Built Python backend services and relational data models for healthcare and financial SaaS platforms. Developed Angular dashboards for business users managing regulated workflows and reporting. Implemented RBAC, audit logging, and data isolation to meet HIPAA and financial compliance requirements. Introduced Dockerized development environments and Terraform-based infrastructure to improve delivery consistency. Served as technical lead on a major project, guiding architecture decisions and mentoring engineers.

Software Engineer

Microsoft

Jun 2014 - Apr 2016 (1 year 11 months)

Built Azure-hosted backend services and REST APIs for telemetry and configuration platforms. Designed event ingestion pipelines processing 15M+ events per day with retries, backoff, and failure handling. Improved request success rates and tail latency through performance tuning and refactoring. Created dashboards and alerts to improve on-call response and production visibility. Built internal search tools for querying telemetry data and service documentation.

About

Detail

Timeline

Résumé

John Torgerson

About

Detail

Behavioral traits