# Oliver Switzer > Staff Software Engineer & Creative Technology Fabricator Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/oliverswitzer I’m a staff software engineer specializing in applied AI systems, with extensive experience working with LLMs to deploy code to production environments. I embed with teams as a freelance AI engineer to help design, build, and harden the technical foundations required to adopt AI responsibly and at scale. My background spans large-scale data replication and high-throughput ingestion pipelines, as well as building complex, user-facing interfaces grounded in user-centered design thinking. I have deep experience working within XP and Agile environments (pairing, iterative delivery, fast feedback loops), and I’m comfortable moving between backend platform work and front-end systems, translating messy technical constraints into tools people actually want to use. The primary languages I work in are Elixir, React / TypeScript, Rust, Ruby, and Python, with extensive experience in Java and Kotlin Alongside my software work, I co-run Oddly Good, a creative technology fabrication and design studio where I blend software, hardware, and physical systems to build interactive installations and mechanically driven experiences. I hold an undergraduate degree in Physics, which continues to shape my approach to engineering: first-principles thinking, comfort with complexity, and a bias toward understanding systems deeply before optimizing them. I’m especially interested in AI tooling for developers and helping organizations level up their internal AI engineering capabilities. ## Work Experience ### Chief Technology Officer @ Oddly Good Jan 2023 – Present | Brooklyn, New York, United States Co-founded and scaled a creative engineering studio delivering custom experiential installations for retail, cultural institutions, and artists. - Own full project lifecycle including client strategy, technical feasibility, budgeting, vendor coordination, and installation execution. - Translate high-level creative vision into engineered systems that meet real-world constraints of cost, durability, and timeline. - Built the operational and financial backbone of a project-based studio business. ### Staff Software Engineer @ Mechanical Orchard Jan 2022 – Jan 2026 | New York, United States - Embedded across teams to ship AI workflows inside unfamiliar codebases, building LLM driven modernization systems for Fortune 500 legacy mainframes. - Led R&D and production delivery of developer tooling, including GraphRAG retrieval and custom MCP servers for semantic search across COBOL, JCL, and Db2. - Built distributed Elixir based agent workflows to autonomously transform COBOL, high concurrency Rust pipelines for Db2 replication with Kafka and Dolt, and production infrastructure with Kubernetes and Terraform. ### Technical Lead @ Kohort Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 - Built distributed, fault tolerant Elixir / OTP systems powering real time video, transcription, and collaborative editing experiences. - Integrated early OpenAI beta LLM models into production pipelines for transcript summarization and semantic extraction, experimenting with prompt design, chunking strategies, and evaluation of output quality. - Implemented ML transcript segmentation and topic change detection to enable structured summarization and improved model performance on long context inputs. ### Software Engineer @ Kohort Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 ### Software Engineer @ Geometer LLC Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Brooklyn, New York, United States ### Senior Software Engineer @ Kickstarter Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Brooklyn, New York - Built, shipped and iterated on full stack user facing features and A/B experiments - Mentored engineers around testing, object oriented design patterns, and extreme programming (XP) practices such as pairing and test drive development - Worked with my team’s product manager to break down work for myself and other engineers on the team - Introduced improved tooling and development processes to the engineering organization through multiple RFCs - Worked to support our iOS and Android native app teams through building out APIs and building cross-platform features ### Software Engineer @ Pivotal Labs Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Manhattan, NY - Worked in multiple product contexts (finance, health care, charity, education), to deliver full-stack features in a consulting setting - Taught XP practices including pair programming and test-driven development to client engineers across a variety of technology stacks and projects - Actively participated in and helped plan user research sessions, as well as technical discovery into new product domains. - Helped identify what new client projects and employees Pivotal will take on - Facilitate weekly retrospectives, iteration planning meetings and office-wide discussions about core XP/LEAN/Agile practices and values - Act as engineering lead on multiple projects, involving conveying core domain to rest of team, scheduling one-on-ones with individual team members and facilitating communication between development team and client stakeholders ### Full-stack Developer @ littleBits Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Manhattan, NY - Primarily use Rails, MySQL, React, jQuery, SASS, ERB, Spree, Wordpress - Build out RESTful mobile app API endpoints - Built backend of Quirky-like voting app called bitLab that uses state machine and voting logic to track state of “bit ideas” that are voted upon and curated - Work with React.js to create first interactive littleBits circuit simulator and build parts of the CMS - Use both Memcached and Redis-based caching for site tracking and increasing site performance - Build in-app AB testing and tracking framework ### Full-stack Developer @ HowAboutWe Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Brooklyn, NY -Rails stack with jQuery/SASS/HAML front-end. -Use TDD (Rspec & Capybara) when writing code for both front and back-end site functionality -Write A/B tests to ensure user acceptance of most new features. -Write scripts to upload and resize images on AWS using Sidekiq worker queues. -Create models that implement worker queues for sending SMS to users using Twilio API -Query Google Maps API to generate static google maps images from geographic coordinates ### Extern Developer @ BetaNYC Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Brooklyn, NY Built a Rails app for BetaNYC to further awareness of open data in government -Applied Rails, Angular, D3, and bootstrap to deliver a timeline visualization of open data events -Munged Google spreadsheet data for binding with SVG objects via D3 -Built custom APIs to serve data to Angular, D3, and site users -Utilized D3 event listeners to make timeline interactive http://www.opengovtimeline.com/ ### Technical Researcher @ Hazards & Compass Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Brooklyn, NY Working for product consulting company on a start up centered around creating an affordable and intuitive graphing calculator for implementation in low socioeconomic status schools: -Research size of the graphing calculator market -Create surveys to distribute to teachers and students to gather information on their relationships to graphing calculators -Research specifications and prices of potential hardware for implementation in the calculator -Design and code the front-end of the Hackulator website in CSS/HTML ### Graphene Lab Research and Setup Coordinator @ Bard College Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Bard College -Pioneer the development of the first research laborartory at Bard College that specializes in the fabrication of graphene heterostrctures. -Assist with setting up various tools such as the Scanning Electron Microscope, Thermal Evaporator, Optical Microscope and Photoresist Spinners -Coordinate and tutor students working in the lab so as to improve the efficiency and efficacy of the fabrication process for the production high quality graphene devices. -Carry out senior project research on electrical interface effects between single and bilayer graphene. ### Research Intern @ Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility (CNF) Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Cornell University -Undertook a ten-week long research project involving fabrication and measurement of a novel spin transfer device under Cornell professor Dan Ralph. -Wrote a final report and presented my findings before the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network and other research interns from 14 other schools. -Grew graphene and characterized it with Raman spectroscopy. -Trained and used many clean room tools such as the graphene furnace, 5X G-line UV Stepper, YES Oxygen Plasma etcher, Profilometer, Lesker and AJA Sputtering System, Ion Milling and E-beam Deposition. ### Sustainability Certification Assistant @ Office of Sustainability Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Bard College -Reviewed extensive tracking and assessment manual distributed by AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) to determine areas in which Bard College could potentially earn credit for actions it has taken toward becoming a greener campus. -Created entire purchasing catalogue for environmentally friendly products ranging from HVAC equipment to clean- ing supplies. ### Web Design Intern @ Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | New York, NY Full-time paid internship under supervision of CEO and Senior Project Adviser of Information Systems: -Participated in project devoted to redesign of company’s intranet website by creating a proposal to sketch out new structure for site ## Education ### Full-stack Web Development The Flatiron School Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 ### Participant in design thinking and social entrepreneurship applied workshop Stanford Institute of Design (d.school) / Project Breaker Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 ### BA in Physics Bard College Jan 2009 – Jan 2013 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/oliver-switzer-030a0856 --- Source: https://flows.cv/oliverswitzer JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/oliverswitzer/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22