{"$schema":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jsonresume/resume-schema/v1.0.0/schema.json","basics":{"name":"Matt Kerkstra","label":"Software Engineer","email":"mattkerkstra@gmail.com","phone":"918-398-3588","url":"https://www.kerkstra.dev","summary":"Staff-level platform engineer. Seven years building production ML infrastructure and the systems other engineers run on. #1 of 45+ contributors across five repositories at my current employer — 2,076 commits, 1.5M LOC over three years. Built the Kubernetes ML platform, the model-serving stack, a voice-to-clinical-note pipeline, and a graph-based clinical AI application that shipped from architecture to production in sixteen days. Architectural bets compound: a single 2023 Postgres/PostGIS migration is still enabling new product surface in 2026.","location":{"city":"Austin","region":"TX","countryCode":"US"},"profiles":[{"network":"GitHub","username":"mkerkstra","url":"https://github.com/mkerkstra"},{"network":"LinkedIn","username":"matt-kerkstra","url":"https://linkedin.com/in/matt-kerkstra"}]},"work":[{"name":"VideaHealth","position":"Senior Software Engineer","url":"https://www.videahealth.com/","startDate":"2023-05-01","summary":"#1 contributor of 45+ engineers across 5 repositories. Operating at Staff scope.","highlights":["Architected and shipped a production AI clinical-note templating system from empty repo to production in 16 days across 3 services. Graph-based LLM pipeline with Postgres-backed checkpointing, semantic section matching via BAAI/bge-m3 embeddings + Milvus, dual-detector PHI anonymization (Presidio + LLM), SSE streaming, and an admin review UI with structured rich-text editing.","Built the production Kubernetes ML platform from an empty repo. Istio ambient mesh, ArgoCD app-of-apps with Kustomize overlays, KServe + vLLM for self-hosted model serving (embeddings, ASR), Langfuse for LLM observability, Milvus for vector search. 13 namespaces / 9 services. Cost stayed flat; new services deploy with a Helm chart and an ArgoCD app. Six engineers now contribute regularly.","Led MongoDB → PostgreSQL/PostGIS migration of a clinical analyses data model (100M+ records); cut heavy queries from >5s to <500ms. Unlocked a multi-year cascade of product capabilities - spatial segmentation storage, per-patient overlays, and the clinical recommendation engine in production today. Own every layer of that chain, from schema through Python algorithms to TypeScript integration across 10+ versions.","Built an end-to-end voice-to-clinical-note pipeline: offline-resilient browser capture (OPFS, Service Workers), Jotai recording state, BullMQ async processing, transcription, structured LLM summarization, multi-language support. Migrated the service into the ML cluster for direct in-mesh access to inference infra. 60K+ TS LOC across client and API.","Delivered the unified-appointments backend that landed the largest dental services organization (DSO) contract in the United States - vault practice search, dual-mode practice support, optimizations for legacy PMS integrations.","Established a Kubeflow-based experimentation framework standardizing data versioning and model promotion across the ML org.","Run the bi-weekly Backend Guild (18+ months) driving cross-team architectural alignment. Drove org-wide adoption of typed query patterns (Kysely + footgun-prevention bots) and AI-assisted developer tooling - first mover on Cursor rules, CLAUDE.md, and MCP integrations a year before mainstream."],"location":"Remote"},{"name":"Paperspace","position":"Software Engineer","url":"https://www.paperspace.com/","startDate":"2022-06-01","endDate":"2023-03-01","summary":"MLOps as a service. Acquired by DigitalOcean.","highlights":["Rebuilt Node.js + Stripe billing to support 2.5× YoY revenue growth while keeping payments under 200 ms.","Implemented real-time fraud and sanctions checks that shut down illicit GPU crypto-mining from embargoed regions, reducing chargebacks >50%."],"location":"Remote"},{"name":"Hotel Engine","position":"Senior Software Engineer / Software Engineer","url":"https://www.hotelengine.com/about-us/","startDate":"2021-07-01","endDate":"2022-06-01","summary":"A hotel booking platform and lodging performance network.","highlights":["Introduced bundle splitting, CDN routing, and feature flags, shrinking mean deploy time from 15 min to 6 min for 40+ engineers.","Drove Redux → React Query migration, reducing cold-start data fetches 40% and bundle size 20%."],"location":"Remote"},{"name":"Reynolds & Reynolds","position":"Software Developer","url":"https://www.reyrey.com/company","startDate":"2019-02-01","endDate":"2021-06-01","summary":"Industry leader in automotive technology and digitization.","highlights":["Converted a 20-year-old version-control system for F&I forms from VB6/SQL to COBOL + Pick BASIC - responsible for distributed delivery, usage tracking & billing, and integration with F&I systems. Assumed lead role two weeks after onboarding and delivered on schedule."],"location":"Houston, TX"}],"education":[{"institution":"Rice University","url":"https://www.rice.edu/","area":"","studyType":"B.A.","endDate":"2018-05","score":"3.71"}],"projects":[{"name":"Narrative Nexus","description":"AI-powered companion for tabletop RPG dungeon masters. Co-built with a group of long-time friends who are also software devs.","url":"https://narrative.sh","keywords":["TypeScript","Next.js","Go"]}],"skills":[{"name":"ML / LLM","keywords":["Kubeflow","KServe","vLLM","LangGraph","Langfuse","RAG","Milvus","BAAI/bge-m3","Presidio","AWS Bedrock","Anthropic Claude","MCP"]},{"name":"Infrastructure","keywords":["Kubernetes","Istio (ambient mesh)","ArgoCD","Helm","Kustomize","Terraform","Karpenter","GitHub Actions","cert-manager","external-secrets"]},{"name":"Data","keywords":["PostgreSQL","PostGIS","Aurora","ClickHouse","Snowflake","Drizzle ORM","Kysely","SQLAlchemy","Mongo → PG migrations","Redis / Valkey","BullMQ","Kafka"]},{"name":"Languages","keywords":["TypeScript","Python","Go","SQL"]},{"name":"App Stack","keywords":["NestJS","Fastify","FastAPI","Pydantic","React","Next.js","Jotai","React Query","OPFS","Service Workers"]},{"name":"Observability","keywords":["Grafana","Tempo","Alloy","OpenTelemetry","Mimir","Loki","Pyroscope"]}],"meta":{"canonical":"https://www.kerkstra.dev/api/resume.json","version":"v1.0.0","lastModified":"2026-04-13T16:04:26.465Z"}}