Jesse-Peplinski-Resume-Reka

Summary

Applied AI engineer, founder/operator, and zero-to-one builder with senior-level ownership across 8+ years shipping customer-facing applications at Equitable. I use Codex and Claude Code as a daily engineering workflow; my recent product work includes Vibe Storefront, Gridiron Rumble, and TrySignalHire; and I built interactive RAG/MCP visualizations to understand the primitives under applied AI. At Hack Upstate, I built operational automation systems and directed a coding bootcamp across 6 cohorts. I want to help Reka productionize frontier AI models into products customers depend on.

Selected AI/Product Work

Vibe Storefront (April 2026 · MVP live within 4h · Next.js, OpenAI, Supabase/Postgres, Clerk, Codex) — Solo-built AI product-validation app; MVP was live within 4 hours, generating structured positioning, copy, imagery, public share pages, and a live gallery.

TrySignalHire (May 2026 · solo-built MVP in progress · Next.js, OpenAI, Supabase/Postgres, Clerk, Vercel) — Solo-built founder/builder MVP for AI-mediated hiring: sourced candidate claims, evidence signals, and human review.

RAG / MCP visualizations (April 2026 · Next.js, Vercel AI SDK, Claude Code) — Interactive teardowns of retrieval, source scoring, JSON-RPC tool discovery, and tool execution.

Experience

Software Engineer July 2017 — Present

Equitable · Syracuse, NY

Generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in business impact by leading the end-to-end redesign of the PCR Rates page, a high-traffic product page with thousands of daily views
Migrated 150 pages from Sitecore to Adobe AEM with zero downtime, collaborating with vendor teams to compress an originally 9-month migration plan into roughly 3 months
Led chatbot development with Microsoft Bot Framework on Azure, serving as lead engineer and managing the project backlog from prototype through MVP
Drove the enterprise CMS through 3 major version upgrades (Sitecore 9.1 → 9.3 → 10.2 → 10.3), organizing data migration processes and issue tracking to ensure smooth cutovers
Shipped the OBP customer portal (React, Java) to help onboard new brokers from outside firms into the organization
Led the migration of an Angular to vanilla JavaScript Retirement Guide, architecting the separation of content and code
Served as lead engineer across major customer-facing web initiatives, taking projects from requirements and stakeholder alignment through implementation, production launch, and post-launch reliability

Partner 2017 — Present

Hack Upstate LLC · Syracuse, NY

Directed and taught in Careers in Code, a 6-month intensive coding bootcamp for underserved populations, running day-to-day delivery across 6 cohorts (2019-2024)
Built admissions and operations systems from scratch, automating the pipeline end-to-end using Zapier, Pipefy, and Notion; implemented EOS for goal tracking
Admitted 102 students, graduated 74 (72.5% graduation rate), placed 24 graduates in tech roles
Managed approximately $1.1M in grant-backed program funding across local government and economic development partners
Organized 100+ person hackathons that brought developers, students, sponsors, and local organizations together to advance Central New York’s tech community

Education

B.S. Computer Science, Mathematics Minor 2015 — 2017

SUNY Potsdam

Benjamin F. Bradley Memorial Award — High achievement & outstanding department contribution
Founded Hack Potsdam (grew from 49 to 116 attendees, $10K raised, MLH partnership). President of ACM. GPA: 3.25
Speaker at HackCon V — "Getting Your Alumni Involved," presented to a national audience of student hackathon organizers

Technical Skills

Languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js, Python, HTML/CSS, Java
AI & LLMs: Codex, Claude Code, OpenAI API, MCP, RAG, embeddings, tool calling, structured outputs, LLM evaluation
Frameworks: React, Next.js, Astro, Vercel AI SDK, Spring Boot, Tailwind CSS
Cloud & Infra: Vercel, Azure DevOps, Git/GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, REST APIs, GraphQL
Automation: Zapier, Pipefy, Notion, n8n (familiar), Make (familiar)
Enterprise: Adobe AEM, Sitecore, Microsoft Bot Framework, cross-platform integrations
Methods: Agile/Scrum, Kanban, cross-functional team leadership