Apolo Serrano

Owned backend reliability and platform security across 12+ production services supporting 25+ workflows and 1.5M+ API requests per month. Advanced AWS/Kubernetes architecture and Terraform-based infrastructure, strengthened CI/CD, and improved observability using CloudWatch. Expanded into AI platform engineering and MLOps by building RAG and model-training workflows with PyTorch and Hugging Face across 20+ experiments; applied LoRA/QLoRA to reduce GPU memory needs by ~55%. Implemented secure-agent controls including IAM least privilege, Secrets Manager usage, Kubernetes RBAC and network policies, retrieval validation, prompt-injection testing, isolated tool permissions, audit logging, and adversarial evaluation aligned with MCP-aware security practices.

Built and maintained backend systems for production applications by delivering 15+ REST APIs and services using TypeScript/Node.js and Python with PostgreSQL. Improved performance by ~32% through indexing, caching, and asynchronous processing. Designed and supported data reliability for schemas covering 40,000+ active users and ~500,000 monthly transactions, adding Redis queues, scheduled jobs, monitoring, and production incident troubleshooting. Led cloud/DevOps improvements by containerizing 10+ applications, supporting AWS-hosted environments for ~8,000 users, and creating CI/CD automation that reduced manual release steps by ~70% and environment setup from ~4 hours to under 1 hour.

Contributed to frontend and backend features under senior guidance before delivering full-stack features independently. Worked on JavaScript/React and Node.js fundamentals, then expanded into TypeScript, PostgreSQL data modeling, authentication, testing, and production releases, including Python-based API services and automation. Delivered impact across 30+ business workflows and 50+ production features/releases, improving application performance by ~28% through query tuning, frontend optimization, and backend refactoring.