James Drakes

James
Drakes

Staff Software Engineer · Austin, TX

I build products on a backend base.

Eleven years in, most of what I have shipped was the first version of something: a fraud engine that challenges suspect orders instead of blocking checkout, a location data platform built from scratch, the capture layer behind an AI annotation product. I am best in the early, unclear stretch, where the right answer is usually a product call before a technical one.

Experience

  1. Staff Software Engineer · H-E-B Jun 2025 — Present

    Delivered 25 tickets across 5 Node services in two weeks by building and governing an AI-agentic workflow with hard permission boundaries.

    Node.js · TypeScript · GraphQL · AWS · PostgreSQL · Redis · CI/CD

  2. CTO · TerraVerum Jan 2025 — Jun 2025

    Built the event capture and replay layer that records the full annotation process, not just the final label; led fundraising into Antler.

    Python · DynamoDB · TypeScript · Vue · Supabase · PostgreSQL · Dexie/IndexedDB

  3. Staff Software Engineer · Assured Claims Mar 2024 — Jan 2025

    Built FNOL ingestion pipelines giving adjusters a faster, self-service path to manage claims.

    Node.js · TypeScript · React · PostgreSQL · AWS

  4. Senior Software Engineer · H-E-B Jan 2023 — Mar 2024

    Built a fraud assessment engine that challenged rather than blocked suspect orders, saving ~$500K a period.

    Node.js · TypeScript · GraphQL · Apache Kafka · AWS · PostgreSQL · Redis

Work history

Outside of work

  • Travel
  • Soccer
  • Fiction
  • Ultimate Frisbee
  • Teaching Financial Literacy