Ross Nesbitt

Senior Platform Engineer | Distributed Systems | Full-Stack Development

30+ Years ExperienceEmployee #10 @ ProofpointProduction Platforms

Professional Overview

Senior platform engineer with 30+ years of systems experience, specializing in distributed computing, full-stack web applications, and production infrastructure at scale. Proven track record building revenue-generating platforms, implementing AI/ML pipelines, and optimizing performance (6X improvements).

Expert in Python, TypeScript/React, Docker, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP). Employee #10 at Proofpoint (email security startup → IPO), currently building distributed AI systems and modern web platforms.

Technical Projects

The Construct - Distributed AI Ensemble Platform

2025-2026 • Production System
  • Architected 3-node distributed computing cluster with Celery task queue and Redis message broker
  • Built REST API (Flask/Gunicorn) with 93.8% cache hit rate and SSE streaming
  • Developed Node.js frontend with HTML5 Canvas and WebGL 3D rendering
  • Optimized performance achieving 6X speedup via ARM architecture evaluation
PythonFlaskCeleryRedisNode.jsDockerWebGL

HapEnews - AI News Analysis Platform

2025-2026 • Production Web Application
💰 Revenue Generating
  • Built full-stack Next.js 14/TypeScript application with SSR/SSG and Redis
  • Implemented advanced web scraping with Playwright anti-bot bypassing Cloudflare/DataDome
  • Successfully scraping protected sites (Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT)
  • Integrated Google AdSense generating revenue
Next.js 14ReactTypeScriptPlaywrightRedisTailwindSolr

Technical Stack

Backend & Infrastructure

Python (Flask, Celery)Node.js (Express)REST APIsMicroservicesDockerRedisMySQL/MariaDBAWS (EC2, Autoscaling)GCPSSH TunnelingLoad Balancing

Frontend & UI

Next.js 14ReactTypeScript/TSXTailwind CSSshadcn/uiHTML5 CanvasWebGLSSR/SSG

Data & AI/ML

Web Scraping (Playwright)LLM IntegrationPrompt EngineeringSolrETL PipelinesRSS Aggregation

Systems & Security

Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu)ProofpointIAM (LDAP, AD)Email SecurityNetwork TroubleshootingPerformance Optimization

Professional Experience

Proofpoint Automation Engineer

Wells Fargo • Irving, TX (Remote)
May 2025 – January 2026
  • Architected Python automation processing 60,000+ entitlement records with complex rule-based logic
  • Designed testing framework and CI/CD pipeline for OpenShift RHEL deployment
  • Integrated with LDAP/Active Directory for large-scale data transformation
⭐ EMPLOYEE #10

Founding Technical Support Engineer & Team Lead

Proofpoint (Email Security Startup) | Sunnyvale, CA
Oct 2004 – Jan 2017 | Startup → IPO
  • Built enterprise email security infrastructure from ground up for Fortune 500 clients
  • Authored original DR automation (became Proofpoint's official failover product)
  • Performance-tuned production MySQL clusters across three continents

Lead Site Reliability Engineer

Roostify (Client: J.P. Morgan Chase) | San Francisco, CA
Mar 2017 – Aug 2019
  • Transformed Ruby on Rails platform from 1 to 10 concurrent transactions through systematic performance tuning
  • Diagnosed and resolved database performance issues using New Relic and Splunk

What Sets Me Apart

Distributed Systems

Production experience building multi-node clusters, message queues, and microservices architectures with proven 6X performance optimization.

Full-Stack Development

Modern web applications with Next.js/React/TypeScript frontend and Python/Node.js backend. Revenue-generating production platforms.

Systems Veteran

30+ years from startup to enterprise scale. Employee #10 at Proofpoint through IPO. Deep Linux, security, and infrastructure expertise.

Available Immediately

Seeking full-time or contract roles in platform engineering, distributed systems, full-stack development, or SRE. Open to remote or hybrid positions. Based in Fort Collins, Colorado (Mountain Time).