Blake Burnette, Senior Full-Stack Engineer

Blake Burnette

Senior Full-Stack Engineer · Remote (Cary, NC, US) · blake@hibiscus.buzz · +1 919.559.2872

I'm a senior full-stack engineer who ships production software end to end. React and TypeScript on the front, Node, Python, and Rust on the back, deployed and running. I spent three years as Director of Engineering over a fintech org that processed $720M+ across 2.5M+ transactions, and a decade before that building and shipping fast across payments, health tech, and consumer products. Hand me a real piece of the roadmap and I ship it in weeks, tested and deployed, not a prototype.

Full-stack, front to back. React/TypeScript UIs, Node/Python/Rust services, on AWS and Google Cloud. I own the whole feature, not just one layer.
Fintech & payments depth. Led five products: payments, ledgers, KYC/KYB, neo-banking, card issuing. $720M+ processed, ledger correct to the penny, 100% uptime through a full platform migration.
Director of Engineering. Ran the fintech engineering org at Snap! Mobile: 17 developers US and abroad, quarterly roadmaps, cut vendor spend 43%.
Ran a 23-person consultancy to $1M ARR. Shipped for Netflix, the Emmys, and funded startups. Founder-grade ownership, solo and fast now, ideal as an embedded contract engineer.
Ships fast without cutting corners. I move quickly but don't skip tests, code review, or clean deploys. Live production issues fixed in minutes, not days.
Builds AI features when the job calls for it. Agents, retrieval, and model evaluation in production, but I'm a generalist engineer first, not a one-trick specialist.

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What I'm building

Hyfstele

Production AI that reviews high-stakes regulated pharma work. It flags the risk, you decide, the record proves it.

See Hyfstele Live MLR demo →

Sir Walter

An AI agent that runs the busywork of a real-estate practice — drafts replies in your voice, nurtures the pipeline, coordinates vendors.

See Sir Walter

Résumé view ▾

Primary Proficiencies

JavaScript / TypeScript · ReactJS · Node · API Design · Rust · Python · Architecture · Management · Building MVPs · Scoping & Refinement · Technology & Business Alignment · Agile · LLM / RAG · Onboarding & Culture

Development Experience

Hibiscus Consulting LLC, Founder & Principal Engineer

2025 – Present

Single-member LLC building and shipping production software across fintech, AI, and infrastructure. All systems on Google Cloud.

PayHive, Stripe Connect Platform

Multi-tenant payment platform on Stripe Connect, deployed on Google Cloud
Domain-specific transaction tagging, dispute orchestration, payout reconciliation

Voice & Agent Systems

Production inbound voice agents that qualify callers and hand off to a human per location (ElevenLabs, AWS Lambda)
Operator dashboard for non-technical users to listen back, tune behavior, and take over; call-feedback ratings and automated tests on every deploy

Owned-Model Pipeline & Evaluation Harness

Built a strict held-out evaluation harness and benchmarked eight models on a real task
Self-hosted, swappable models with retrieval grounding, independent grading, and human-in-the-loop review

Cryptographic Audit Infrastructure

Append-only Merkle audit chain in production on Google Cloud; exportable proofs of inclusion
Army SBIR Phase I (In-Transit Visibility), cryptographic provenance for logistics data

Snap! Mobile, Director of Engineering, Fintech

2022 – 2025

Led the entire fintech engineering org across five products: Payments, KYC/KYB (Vault), Ledger, Neo-banking (Spend), and Card Issuing (Wallet).

Payments: $720M+ across 2.5M+ transactions; AWS Lambda to Kubernetes migration without dropping a dollar, 100% uptime; Stripe, PayPal, ApplePay, GooglePay, ACH
Vault: reusable KYB/KYC capture maintaining AML/BSA compliance; tokenization for 100% of PII/PCI
Ledger: immutable database ledger to the penny; system of record for the payments service
Spend: neo-bank; migrated 100+ orgs, 4k DDAs, 21k teams, 205k users, $10M funds
Management: 17 developers US and abroad; cut vendor budget 43%; quarterly roadmaps; hiring, 1:1s, dev growth

Adaptiv Solutions Consultancy, President (23 employees), $1M ARR

2018 – 2022

Crossbar (Lead Dev): React Native + Python MVP; managed scope/runway by prioritizing revenue features; enabled a $750k seed round
Sideqik (Lead Dev): replaced Ember frontend with React (Auth0, dashboards, social integrations); led Rails API buildout
The Emmys (Lead Dev): virtual winner’s walk for the first pandemic awards show; webRTC + realtime; 13-week project in 5 weeks; fixed a live production issue in 14 minutes during the show
Netflix (Lead Dev): repurposed the Emmys platform for virtual premieres, including a special event for CEO Ted Sarandos

Medaxion, JavaScript Developer (Health Tech)

2016 – 2018

Built and maintained web UI for an anesthesia record-keeping application (Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Sass)
Introduced ReactJS to incrementally replace the Rails view layer; testing with Minitest/Capybara/Cucumber

Regency Business Solutions, Web Developer

2014 – 2016

B2B e-commerce platforms (Angular 1); automated card design/production and shipping data; inventory forecasting

Education

North Carolina State University, BA, 2011 · github.com/blakeburnette

How I work

An embedded contract engineer who ships.

Full-stack ownership

Front end, back end, infrastructure, deploy. One engineer who takes a feature from idea to running in production, instead of three handoffs that stall.

Fast, without the mess

I scope a real piece of the roadmap and ship it in weeks. Quick, but with tests, code review, and clean deploys. Speed that doesn’t come back to bite you.

Senior judgment

A decade leading and shipping across payments, health tech, and consumer products. I make the call, communicate clearly, and I’m right more than I’m wrong.

Available now for remote work.

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