From bf9d9c2b6adc44f22963449664a214268175e056 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:11:47 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 1/8] Add Flagship Lab 105 experience and IrisChat launch --- README.rst | 13 +++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 9e22c1c..91ba2d2 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -55,6 +55,19 @@ SDKs and Libraries: boto3 Work Experience =============== +Flagship Lab 105, Inc +--------------------- + +:Title: Senior Principal Software Engineer (November 2025 - Present) +:Previous Title: Principal Software Engineer (October 2024 - October 2025) +:Period: October 2024 - Present + +Building IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software engineering to bring a new AI product to market. + +- Conducted AI research and explored business opportunities as a Principal Software Engineer. +- Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. +- Promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025; continue developing IrisChat. + Guvnor AI --------- From c1575176ce0036fbff4cfb787c9943209601d978 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:14:53 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 2/8] Remove Guvnor personal project experience --- README.rst | 11 ----------- 1 file changed, 11 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 91ba2d2..1be4735 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -68,17 +68,6 @@ Building IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software eng - Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. - Promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025; continue developing IrisChat. -Guvnor AI ---------- - -:Title: Creator -:Location: Salem Massachusetts -:Period: December 2023 - Present - -I developed a chatbot with streaming responses entirely on AWS serverless infrastructure. The goal of Guvnor is to demonstrate personalization and long-term memory by populating and querying a knowledge graph as a RAG method. Guvnor is my personal playground for experimenting with AI and large language models. - -- Python, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, Large Language Models, Llama Index, LangChain, AWS API Gateway, aws-cdk, Neo4j, Github Actions - Hosta AI -------- From e9e3fb0a2c665cfcaf1cfca3a2707180044d2052 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:16:00 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 3/8] Credit invention of IrisChat graph-memory approach --- README.rst | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 1be4735..40debab 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ Building IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software eng - Conducted AI research and explored business opportunities as a Principal Software Engineer. - Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. +- Invented IrisChat's graph-memory approach, making graph memory a core part of the product's AI architecture. - Promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025; continue developing IrisChat. Hosta AI From 52d42f0fe25ae02dd11240b8689b5631de3d6dbe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:18:07 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 4/8] Refine graph-based memory system contribution wording --- README.rst | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 40debab..39854a4 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ Building IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software eng - Conducted AI research and explored business opportunities as a Principal Software Engineer. - Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. -- Invented IrisChat's graph-memory approach, making graph memory a core part of the product's AI architecture. +- Conceived and designed a graph-based memory system for IrisChat. - Promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025; continue developing IrisChat. Hosta AI From 289d13e5b9a803eb21fe3deb19216b21b071c3f3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:41:21 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 5/8] Refresh resume around AI SaaS architecture and product experimentation --- README.rst | 58 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------- 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 39854a4..21f5880 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -8,11 +8,13 @@ Theodore Cowan :Address: Salem, Massachusetts -Building SaaS products on AWS is my core power. My professional identity is rooted in a love for helping others and deriving satisfaction from empowering myself and others to be excellent builders. I am a results-driven professional with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and an unwavering commitment to advancing business objectives. I am expertly skilled in public cloud architecture, product architecture, product delivery, and streaming data engineering within Software-as-a-Service. +Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on building AI-powered SaaS products on AWS. I combine hands-on engineering, AI research, and business exploration with a deep interest in system design and architecture. At Flagship Lab 105, Inc, I built and launched IrisChat and continue developing its conversational AI capabilities. -I am a passionate free software advocate with a keen interest in AI and an active contributor to the community. I am proficient in Python, TypeScript, and Golang, and I am certified (EMCCAe) as a Cloud Architect. +I find particular satisfaction in designing systems: connecting long-term memory, context engineering, agent orchestration, and messaging into cohesive products. My recent work centers on LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI, with AWS infrastructure defined through AWS CDK. I also bring an experiment-driven approach to product development, using Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support feature experimentation and releases. -Areas of Expertise: AWS, Software Development, Cloud Architecture, DevOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, Streaming Data Engineering, SaaS, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Free Software, Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models. +I am proficient in Python, TypeScript, and Go, certified (EMCCAe) as a Cloud Architect, and a passionate free software advocate who values mentoring and helping others become excellent builders. + +Areas of Expertise: AI SaaS Product Development, System Design, Software Architecture, Conversational AI, Agent Orchestration, Graph-Based Memory, Context Engineering, Prompt Engineering, LLM Evaluation, Product Analytics and Experimentation, AWS, Infrastructure as Code, Streaming Data Engineering. ---------------------------------- @@ -24,12 +26,15 @@ I have over 12 years of experience in AWS, specializing in Platform Operations, Key Areas of Expertise ---------------------- -Cloud Architecture: Design and implement scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud architectures. -Cloud Migrations: Lead and execute complex migrations to AWS, ensuring minimal disruption. -Cost Optimization: Develop strategies to reduce AWS costs through resource monitoring and tradeoff analysis. -DevOps: Implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and automated deployment processes. -Data Engineering: Build and manage streaming data pipelines, data lakes, and analytics solutions. -Machine Learning: Train and deploy machine learning models using AWS services. +- AI Application Engineering: Build conversational AI systems using LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI. +- System Design & Architecture: Design SaaS systems that connect AI capabilities, data pipelines, cloud services, and product integrations. +- Memory & Context Engineering: Design graph-based long-term memory and manage the context supplied to conversational AI. +- Proactive Agent Orchestration: Design context-aware scheduling that supports future agent invocation and decisions to respond, reschedule, or skip. +- LLM Evaluation & Prompt Engineering: Develop prompts and evaluation workflows incorporating human annotations. +- Product Analytics & Experimentation: Use Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support experiment-driven feature releases. +- Cloud Engineering: Build managed and serverless AWS systems with AWS CDK, CI/CD, observability, and cost optimization. +- Data Engineering: Build streaming data pipelines, data lakes, and analytics solutions. +- Cloud Migrations: Lead and execute migrations to AWS. AWS Services Proficiencies @@ -40,17 +45,21 @@ Storage & Databases: S3, EFS, DynamoDB, RDS, Aurora, Neptune Networking: VPC, Route 53, Direct Connect, CloudFront Security & Identity: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Cognito Analytics & Data Processing: Athena, Glue, Redshift, DataFirehose -Machine Learning: SageMaker, Comprehend, Rekognition +Machine Learning & AI: Bedrock, SageMaker, Comprehend, Rekognition Application Integration: SNS, SQS, Step Functions, EventBridge Management & Monitoring: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Systems Manager, X-Ray -Tooling -------- +Languages and Tooling +--------------------- -Infrastructure as Code: aws-cdk, CloudFormation, Terraform -Configuration Management: Helm, cdk8s, SaltStack -CI/CD: GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity -SDKs and Libraries: boto3 +- Languages: Python, TypeScript, Go +- AI & Agent Frameworks: LangChain, LangGraph +- AI Platforms: AWS Bedrock, OpenAI +- Product Analytics & Experimentation: Amplitude, LaunchDarkly +- Infrastructure as Code: AWS CDK, CloudFormation, Terraform +- Configuration Management: Helm, cdk8s, SaltStack +- CI/CD: GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity +- SDKs and Libraries: boto3 Work Experience =============== @@ -62,12 +71,19 @@ Flagship Lab 105, Inc :Previous Title: Principal Software Engineer (October 2024 - October 2025) :Period: October 2024 - Present -Building IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software engineering to bring a new AI product to market. +Built and launched IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software engineering to bring an AI SaaS product to market. Continue developing the product with a focus on system design, conversational AI, and experiment-driven feature releases. + +- Joined as Principal Software Engineer in October 2024 to conduct AI research and explore business opportunities. +- Launched IrisChat and was promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025. +- Conceived and designed a graph-based memory system for IrisChat to support long-term conversational memory. +- Develop context engineering and conversational AI workflows using LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI. +- Designed a context-aware scheduling system that enables IrisChat to initiate future interactions from explicit user requests or inferred needs, then evaluate whether to respond, reschedule, or skip when triggered. +- Integrate IrisChat with iMessage, RCS, and SMS. +- Develop prompts and LLM evaluation workflows incorporating human annotations. +- Use Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support product analytics and experiment-driven feature releases. +- Build AWS infrastructure using AWS CDK. -- Conducted AI research and explored business opportunities as a Principal Software Engineer. -- Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. -- Conceived and designed a graph-based memory system for IrisChat. -- Promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025; continue developing IrisChat. +- Python, TypeScript, AWS, AWS CDK, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, LangChain, LangGraph, Amplitude, LaunchDarkly Hosta AI -------- From ac5175e93043a452b1c720709ab1deaf3c4ffaa8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:47:30 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 6/8] Keep employer names in work experience and trim minor tooling detail --- README.rst | 3 +-- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 21f5880..2130d96 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Theodore Cowan :Address: Salem, Massachusetts -Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on building AI-powered SaaS products on AWS. I combine hands-on engineering, AI research, and business exploration with a deep interest in system design and architecture. At Flagship Lab 105, Inc, I built and launched IrisChat and continue developing its conversational AI capabilities. +Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on building AI-powered SaaS products on AWS. I combine hands-on engineering, AI research, and business exploration with a deep interest in system design and architecture. I build and launch conversational AI products, taking systems from exploration through production and continued development. I find particular satisfaction in designing systems: connecting long-term memory, context engineering, agent orchestration, and messaging into cohesive products. My recent work centers on LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI, with AWS infrastructure defined through AWS CDK. I also bring an experiment-driven approach to product development, using Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support feature experimentation and releases. @@ -59,7 +59,6 @@ Languages and Tooling - Infrastructure as Code: AWS CDK, CloudFormation, Terraform - Configuration Management: Helm, cdk8s, SaltStack - CI/CD: GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity -- SDKs and Libraries: boto3 Work Experience =============== From 244a4d9bcd9eac921a2f861d540d405ccfee8a68 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:48:47 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 7/8] Simplify current title and remove promotion narrative --- README.rst | 7 +++---- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 2130d96..b8f3af4 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -66,14 +66,13 @@ Work Experience Flagship Lab 105, Inc --------------------- -:Title: Senior Principal Software Engineer (November 2025 - Present) -:Previous Title: Principal Software Engineer (October 2024 - October 2025) +:Title: Senior Principal Software Engineer :Period: October 2024 - Present Built and launched IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software engineering to bring an AI SaaS product to market. Continue developing the product with a focus on system design, conversational AI, and experiment-driven feature releases. -- Joined as Principal Software Engineer in October 2024 to conduct AI research and explore business opportunities. -- Launched IrisChat and was promoted to Senior Principal Software Engineer in November 2025. +- Conduct AI research and explore business opportunities for AI-powered SaaS products. +- Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. - Conceived and designed a graph-based memory system for IrisChat to support long-term conversational memory. - Develop context engineering and conversational AI workflows using LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI. - Designed a context-aware scheduling system that enables IrisChat to initiate future interactions from explicit user requests or inferred needs, then evaluate whether to respond, reschedule, or skip when triggered. From 86bfbee1da164556673abd322293088f5129eda0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Theodore Cowan Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:00:27 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 8/8] Lead with engineering capabilities and broaden SaaS product experience --- README.rst | 69 +++++++++++++++++------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 48 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index b8f3af4..93eb76a 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -8,57 +8,29 @@ Theodore Cowan :Address: Salem, Massachusetts -Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on building AI-powered SaaS products on AWS. I combine hands-on engineering, AI research, and business exploration with a deep interest in system design and architecture. I build and launch conversational AI products, taking systems from exploration through production and continued development. +Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on designing and building AI-powered SaaS products. I combine hands-on full-stack engineering with system architecture, AI research, and business exploration, taking products from early concepts through launch and continued development. -I find particular satisfaction in designing systems: connecting long-term memory, context engineering, agent orchestration, and messaging into cohesive products. My recent work centers on LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI, with AWS infrastructure defined through AWS CDK. I also bring an experiment-driven approach to product development, using Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support feature experimentation and releases. +I find particular satisfaction in system design: turning product needs into cohesive applications, services, and data flows. My work spans AI applications, backend services, frontend experiences, cloud infrastructure, checkout and billing, product experimentation, and conversion measurement. I bring an experiment-driven approach to feature delivery and connect engineering decisions to product and business objectives. I am proficient in Python, TypeScript, and Go, certified (EMCCAe) as a Cloud Architect, and a passionate free software advocate who values mentoring and helping others become excellent builders. -Areas of Expertise: AI SaaS Product Development, System Design, Software Architecture, Conversational AI, Agent Orchestration, Graph-Based Memory, Context Engineering, Prompt Engineering, LLM Evaluation, Product Analytics and Experimentation, AWS, Infrastructure as Code, Streaming Data Engineering. - ---------------------------------- -AWS Experience -============== +Engineering Capabilities +======================== -I have over 12 years of experience in AWS, specializing in Platform Operations, Cloud Architecture, Cloud Migrations, Cost Optimization, DevOps, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, and Machine Learning. I am a strong proponent of leveraging cloud-native solutions, preferring managed services over self-hosted options, serverless architectures over provisioned infrastructure, and buying over building when appropriate. +- System Design & Architecture: Design SaaS applications, service boundaries, integrations, and data flows using event-driven architecture and Domain-Driven Design. +- AI Application Engineering: Integrate foundation models, orchestrate stateful agents, engineer context, and develop prompts and evaluation workflows incorporating human annotations. +- Full-Stack Product Development: Build backend services, APIs, and customer-facing web applications. +- SaaS Commerce: Implement checkout, subscriptions, billing, and customer onboarding. +- Product Analytics & Experimentation: Instrument user behavior, support feature experiments, and deliver controlled releases. +- Data Engineering & Conversion Measurement: Build streaming pipelines, analytics integrations, and conversion-tracking systems supporting customer acquisition. +- Cloud Engineering & Delivery: Design managed and serverless infrastructure, automate deployments with infrastructure as code and CI/CD, and support observability and cost optimization. -Key Areas of Expertise ----------------------- - -- AI Application Engineering: Build conversational AI systems using LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI. -- System Design & Architecture: Design SaaS systems that connect AI capabilities, data pipelines, cloud services, and product integrations. -- Memory & Context Engineering: Design graph-based long-term memory and manage the context supplied to conversational AI. -- Proactive Agent Orchestration: Design context-aware scheduling that supports future agent invocation and decisions to respond, reschedule, or skip. -- LLM Evaluation & Prompt Engineering: Develop prompts and evaluation workflows incorporating human annotations. -- Product Analytics & Experimentation: Use Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support experiment-driven feature releases. -- Cloud Engineering: Build managed and serverless AWS systems with AWS CDK, CI/CD, observability, and cost optimization. -- Data Engineering: Build streaming data pipelines, data lakes, and analytics solutions. -- Cloud Migrations: Lead and execute migrations to AWS. - - -AWS Services Proficiencies --------------------------- - -Compute: EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS -Storage & Databases: S3, EFS, DynamoDB, RDS, Aurora, Neptune -Networking: VPC, Route 53, Direct Connect, CloudFront -Security & Identity: IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Cognito -Analytics & Data Processing: Athena, Glue, Redshift, DataFirehose -Machine Learning & AI: Bedrock, SageMaker, Comprehend, Rekognition -Application Integration: SNS, SQS, Step Functions, EventBridge -Management & Monitoring: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Systems Manager, X-Ray - -Languages and Tooling ---------------------- +Cloud Architecture +------------------ -- Languages: Python, TypeScript, Go -- AI & Agent Frameworks: LangChain, LangGraph -- AI Platforms: AWS Bedrock, OpenAI -- Product Analytics & Experimentation: Amplitude, LaunchDarkly -- Infrastructure as Code: AWS CDK, CloudFormation, Terraform -- Configuration Management: Helm, cdk8s, SaltStack -- CI/CD: GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity +I have over 12 years of experience building on AWS across software engineering, data engineering, platform operations, cloud migrations, and machine learning. I favor managed services and serverless architectures, building differentiating capabilities and buying established solutions when appropriate. Work Experience =============== @@ -69,19 +41,20 @@ Flagship Lab 105, Inc :Title: Senior Principal Software Engineer :Period: October 2024 - Present -Built and launched IrisChat, combining AI research, business exploration, and software engineering to bring an AI SaaS product to market. Continue developing the product with a focus on system design, conversational AI, and experiment-driven feature releases. +Develop IrisChat through AI research, business exploration, system architecture, and hands-on full-stack engineering. Built and launched the AI SaaS product in November 2025 and continue delivering features through an experiment-driven release process. - Conduct AI research and explore business opportunities for AI-powered SaaS products. -- Built and launched IrisChat in November 2025. - Conceived and designed a graph-based memory system for IrisChat to support long-term conversational memory. -- Develop context engineering and conversational AI workflows using LangChain, LangGraph, AWS Bedrock, and OpenAI. +- Develop conversational AI workflows and context engineering, integrating foundation models and stateful agent orchestration. - Designed a context-aware scheduling system that enables IrisChat to initiate future interactions from explicit user requests or inferred needs, then evaluate whether to respond, reschedule, or skip when triggered. - Integrate IrisChat with iMessage, RCS, and SMS. - Develop prompts and LLM evaluation workflows incorporating human annotations. -- Use Amplitude and LaunchDarkly to support product analytics and experiment-driven feature releases. -- Build AWS infrastructure using AWS CDK. +- Implement product instrumentation, behavioral analytics, and controlled feature releases to support continuous experimentation. +- Build customer-facing web experiences with React and implement checkout and subscription billing with Stripe. +- Implement data pipelines and conversion-tracking integrations supporting Meta and TikTok marketing campaigns. +- Design and build managed and serverless AWS infrastructure using infrastructure as code. -- Python, TypeScript, AWS, AWS CDK, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, LangChain, LangGraph, Amplitude, LaunchDarkly +- Selected technologies: Python, TypeScript, React, AWS CDK, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, LangChain, LangGraph, Stripe, Amplitude, LaunchDarkly Hosta AI --------