About

Justin Quaintance

Hey! 👋 I'm a technical leader with 6+ years building AI solutions that actually work.

I bridge cutting-edge AI capabilities with real-world business problems. Started as a founding engineer, evolved through different roles, but always focused on whether what I'm building solves actual problems people have.

I've worked on water treatment plants, banking platforms, and security systems. The pattern's always the same: something's broken, people are frustrated, and they need someone who speaks both human and computer. Sometimes those computer problems involve AI.

What I've Built

5% energy reduction
across industrial water plants via core ML algorithms with patent-pending processes
2x+ development efficiency
through integrated AI workflows and organizational adoption
97% uptime
banking platform infrastructure with complete production architecture
Custom AI agent systems
(Friendly Robots project) for development automation

What I Work With

  • AI/ML: PyTorch, scikit-learn, TensorFlow • the usual data science stack
  • Modern Data Stack: dbt, BigQuery, Metabase • mostly used pandas, now building with these
  • Backend: Expert-level Python (FastAPI, pandas, pytest), Node.js with NestJS, PostgreSQL
  • Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript for full-stack applications
  • Infrastructure: NixOS (completely changed how I set up dev environments), Kubernetes, AWS/GCP, Terraform

These days I'm doing both technical work and product strategy. I've gotten decent at taking MVP ideas and figuring out what actually needs to be built.

When I'm Not Building

I make music, take photos, and hang out with my cat while taking care of way too many plants.

Really passionate about NixOS. As someone who builds AI systems, I love how it lets me have reproducible infrastructure that my models can actually understand and work with. Being able to declaratively manage everything from development to production is huge when you're building AI that needs to be infrastructure-aware.

I go to PyCon every year (3 consecutive years so far) to learn from people and bring ideas home. Continuous learning and effective mentorship of junior developers matters to me.

Got a technical problem making your life harder? Let's talk.