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Joel Auken

@joelauken

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Senior backend and AI engineer specializing in Python, distributed systems, and production ML deployments.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek roles building scalable backend and ML-inference systems using Python, Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure, with emphasis on observability, reliability, and mentoring.

I am a Senior Backend & AI Engineer with 7+ years designing distributed systems, data pipelines, and API platforms across energy markets, industrial IoT, and healthcare domains.

I build high-performance, event-driven architectures using Python, microservices, Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), focusing on low-latency APIs and enterprise-grade uptime.

I partner closely with ML teams to deploy and optimize models in production using MLflow, LangChain, and vector/RAG systems, and I emphasize observability with Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.

I deliver robust CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and data governance solutions, mentor engineers, and drive measurable impact — from reducing downtime and processing high-volume settlement transactions to improving analytic productivity with semantic search.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Backend & AI Engineer

Current

MISO

Feb 2022 - Present (4 years 4 months)

Designed market clearing and settlements platforms for day-ahead and real-time energy markets, delivering sub-300ms API latencies and processing $15M daily settlement transactions while supporting $2.1B annual market operations.

Python Kubernetes Azure Kafka fastAPI Pydantic MLFlow CI CD Kafka Streams

Full Stack Developer

Blue Pillar

Oct 2020 - Feb 2022 (1 year 4 months)

Built an Azure-based IIoT connectivity platform normalizing Modbus/BACnet/MQTT telemetry into multi-tenant PostgreSQL models and implemented an alarming pipeline achieving sub-2s alarm propagation p95 across 500+ healthcare facilities.

Python Django Azure Kafka PostgreSQL Celery Redis Prometheus Grafana

Full Stack Developer

Vyne Dental

May 2018 - Oct 2020 (2 years 5 months)

Established multi-tenant RCM platform handling eligibility verification and claims processing for 84,000+ practices, delivering sub-300ms p95 eligibility APIs and processing $50M monthly claims volume.

Python Flask AWS Redis Celery S3 Pytest API Design