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With 20+ years of experience designing, shipping, and maintaining production web applications, REST APIs, and AI-integrated systems, I bring hands-on expertise across the full stack. I enjoy turning complex requirements into scalable, reliable software and leading teams to deliver high-quality results. As CTO and co-founder of Firefly Creative, I guide architecture, client engagement, and end-to-end delivery. I led the development of Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform designed for data sovereignty and compliance, self-hosted on Hetzner with container-isolated tenants for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I own the technical strategy, onboarding, and mentorship across our team, and translate business goals into practical technical decisions.…With 20+ years of experience designing, shipping, and maintaining production web applications, REST APIs, and AI-integrated systems, I bring hands-on expertise across the full stack. I enjoy turning complex requirements into scalable, reliable software and leading teams to deliver high-quality results. As CTO and co-founder of Firefly Creative, I guide architecture, client engagement, and end-to-end delivery. I led the development of Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform designed for data sovereignty and compliance, self-hosted on Hetzner with container-isolated tenants for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I own the technical strategy, onboarding, and mentorship across our team, and translate business goals into practical technical decisions.

Alex Strait

Full Stack Developer, Web Developer, Back-End Developer, +5

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With 20+ years of experience designing, shipping, and maintaining production web applications, REST APIs, and AI-integrated systems, I bring hands-on expertise across the full stack. I enjoy turning complex requirements into scalable, reliable software and leading teams to deliver high-quality results. As CTO and co-founder of Firefly Creative, I guide architecture, client engagement, and end-to-end delivery. I led the development of Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform designed for data sovereignty and compliance, self-hosted on Hetzner with container-isolated tenants for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I own the technical strategy, onboarding, and mentorship across our team, and translate business goals into practical technical decisions.…With 20+ years of experience designing, shipping, and maintaining production web applications, REST APIs, and AI-integrated systems, I bring hands-on expertise across the full stack. I enjoy turning complex requirements into scalable, reliable software and leading teams to deliver high-quality results. As CTO and co-founder of Firefly Creative, I guide architecture, client engagement, and end-to-end delivery. I led the development of Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform designed for data sovereignty and compliance, self-hosted on Hetzner with container-isolated tenants for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I own the technical strategy, onboarding, and mentorship across our team, and translate business goals into practical technical decisions.

Available to hire

With 20+ years of experience designing, shipping, and maintaining production web applications, REST APIs, and AI-integrated systems, I bring hands-on expertise across the full stack. I enjoy turning complex requirements into scalable, reliable software and leading teams to deliver high-quality results.

As CTO and co-founder of Firefly Creative, I guide architecture, client engagement, and end-to-end delivery. I led the development of Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform designed for data sovereignty and compliance, self-hosted on Hetzner with container-isolated tenants for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I own the technical strategy, onboarding, and mentorship across our team, and translate business goals into practical technical decisions.

Skills

Experience Level

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Intermediate

Work Experience

Full Stack Developer at Self-employed

January 1, 2003 - Present

Managed development milestones from initial steps through final delivery. Gathered and defined customer requirements to develop clear specifications for project plans. Took concepts and developed project plans. Completed full redesigns of existing websites to improve navigation, visuals, and strengthen search engine rankings. Collected, defined and translated user requirements into project designs and implementation plans. Delivered user support to clients to train, educate and answer questions. Conducted unit testing to deliver optimal browser functionality. Created powerful Content Management Systems to serve as interface for clients. Engineered, deployed and maintained CD/CI pipelines.

CTO & Co-Founder at Firefly Creative

January 1, 2023 - Present

Co-founded and lead the technical direction of a web development and AI-integration company; own architecture, hiring decisions, and client-facing technical strategy. Architected and built Ragsmith, a multi-tenant AI platform with ~100,000 lines of production code, supporting 50+ LLM providers with agentic tool chaining, hybrid retrieval, and an OpenAI-compatible REST API layer. Designed Ragsmith to meet data-sovereignty and compliance requirements—self-hosted on Hetzner, container-isolated tenants, with no third-party data leakage—applicable to healthcare and financial services. Lead all client-facing technical conversations: requirements gathering, scoping, architectural recommendations, ongoing guidance, and translation between business goals and technical decisions. Built and maintain a three-tier WordPress meta-framework with a custom CLI of 45+ commands and a PHP AST parser, enabling rapid client delivery while maintaining security and maintainability. Run production deployme

Senior Full Stack Developer at Independent / Freelance

January 1, 2003 - Present

Delivered full-stack web development across PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and modern frontend tooling for clients across professional services, e-commerce, and nonprofit sectors. Owned projects end-to-end: discovery, system design, implementation, testing, deployment, and ongoing client support and training. Completed full site redesigns to improve performance, security posture, navigation, and search visibility. Built custom CMS and admin interfaces, including bespoke WordPress plugins and themes; engineered and maintained CI/CD pipelines.