Ben Huffine | Senior Software Engineer

Summary

Senior Software Engineer / Platform Engineer with a decade-plus track record designing and operating production systems. Recent focus on AWS-based platform engineering, internal developer tooling, and applied AI systems using retrieval-augmented generation to enable teams and improve delivery velocity.

Focus Areas

Designing scalable cloud infrastructure on AWS (ECS, RDS, VPC, CloudFormation)
Building platform tooling that reduces operational toil and enables teams
Delivering applied AI systems using AWS Bedrock and RAG
Supporting internationalization and localization at scale
End-to-end delivery with a focus on reliability and production readiness

Project Highlights

AI Enablement Platform

Designed shared infrastructure and APIs to enable multiple AI product efforts across a cloud-native platform, reducing duplicated effort and accelerating experimentation.

Delivered a common API layer to standardize model access and governance.
Implemented RAG foundations to align responses with internal data.
Enabled rapid prototyping with reusable patterns and deployment tooling.

AWS Bedrock, ECS, Python, Django

Cloud Operations Console

Built internal tooling to manage AWS resources, deployments, and operational workflows, improving visibility and reducing manual operational overhead.

Automated infrastructure changes with auditable, repeatable pipelines.
Reduced manual toil by centralizing service configuration.
Improved reliability with visibility into environment health and events.

AWS CDK, CloudFormation, PostgreSQL

Internationalization Tooling

Built translation workflows for a large curriculum platform transitioning to a modern SPA, enabling faster global rollout while preserving content integrity.

Created a side-by-side translation interface for machine-assisted review.
Streamlined content localization while preserving layout intent.
Supported global rollouts with a scalable, versioned pipeline.

React, Node.js, Classic ASP, SQL Server

Experience

Platform Engineer, Ambition

2020–2025

Designed and maintained AWS infrastructure across ECS, RDS, S3, CloudWatch, and VPC.
Deployed resources with custom CloudFormation templates using AWS CDK.
Built internal tooling with Python, Django, and PostgreSQL to manage cloud operations.
Architected AI APIs and retrieval-augmented generation using AWS Bedrock.

Senior Software Engineer, ACT

2013–2020

Modernized a Flash-based curriculum platform into a responsive SPA.
Built translation tooling for internationalization and content-aware workflows.
Delivered features across Classic ASP, SQL Server, Python, React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL.
Contributed to change data capture systems using Java, Kafka, and Jenkins.

Earlier Career Experience

Freelance Software Engineer — web, mobile, and data systems for diverse clients
Senior Programmer, Coptix/Medium — custom software across Django, Rails, and SQL
Operations Tech Analyst II, UnumProvident — internal tooling and automation

Skills

Languages

Python, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, Ruby

Frameworks

Django, React, Node.js, Ruby on Rails

Cloud

AWS ECS, RDS, S3, VPC, CloudWatch, Bedrock, CloudFormation

Data

PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, ElastiCache

DevOps

AWS CDK, Jenkins, Kafka, Webpack, Babel

Education

Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA — Information & Computer Sciences and Philosophy (2002)

Contact

For opportunities or collaboration, reach out via email or LinkedIn.

ben@huffine.me Download Resume linkedin.com/in/ben-huffine-8b54981