James D. McMillian

James D. McMillian

CTO · VP Engineering · Technical Lead
Open to remote-US and Tokyo

I build systems that don't stop at proof of concept — they run in production, at scale, under real load.

Availability Open to CTO, VP Engineering and senior technical leadership roles — Q4 2026. 
Consider me for...

Summary

Thirty-plus years building and leading engineering teams, from hands-on systems architecture to CTO. Twenty of those years have included applied AI and machine learning embedded directly in production systems, not bolted on after the fact. I've run distributed teams across the US, Japan, Myanmar and Singapore, taken products from concept through deployment, and rebuilt broken systems into ones that hold up under real-world load.

“I thought I was writing code to live…

…I found I was living to code.”— Me

Experience

Co-Founder / Chief Technology Officer

Nov 2024 – Present
CRSTBL Inc. — Los Angeles, CA
  • Co-founded CRSTBL to build CRSTA AI Marketing, a platform that makes structured brand and retail data discoverable by LLMs and AI assistants — Answer Engine Optimization for retail.
  • Architected the multi-tenant SaaS platform end to end: the CRSTA Index Taxonomy, role-based access for brands, distributors, retailers and agencies, and Model Context Protocol integration so the data is queryable by AI agents directly.
  • Built and run the infrastructure underneath it — a 5-account AWS organization, OIDC-based CI/CD with no long-lived credentials, an EKS-based Kubernetes platform, and a self-hosted GitLab instance.
  • Write the core system personally in Java 21, Node.js, TypeScript and React, and sign off as final technical authority on every release.
Java:21Node.jsTypeScriptReactPostgreSQLMongoDBRedisAWS/GCP/AzureTerraformKubernetes

Co-Founder / CTO / Technical Director

Mar 2008 – Sep 2025
Centerfire Digital (formerly DifTech Services) — Austin, TX
Founder role, held concurrently with the employed positions below.
  • Founding member; worked every layer from developer to architect to CTO over 17 years running a fully remote, distributed development firm.
  • Directly managed teams ranging from a single engineer up to 30 developers, engineers and designers at once.
  • Final technical authority on feature and project sign-off before client release; owned the QA process end to end.
  • Partnered directly with the CEO to scope customer requirements and close deals on the technical side.
JavaC++MySQL/PostgreSQLDistributed SystemsAlgorithmic Trading

Team Leader, Senior Software Engineer

Sep 2019 – Mar 2024
First Orion — North Little Rock, AR
  • Led the microservice redesign behind First Orion's scam/spam call protection, cutting server count from 1,000 to 50 — 20× fewer machines — and saving $1.1M a year.
  • Eliminated processing bottlenecks in the primary call pipeline, lifting throughput 600% without new hardware, for another $800K a year in savings.
  • Re-engineered a critical service to 99.9999% uptime, supporting 260M+ subscribers and 2M daily users.
  • Implemented STIR/SHAKEN caller attestation using distributed ledger technology, contributing to an 87% reduction in scam callers network-wide.
  • Authored First Orion's first ISO-27001 business-continuity and disaster-recovery documentation, and coordinated across Cloud, Automation and Security teams.
Java:11+KafkaKubernetes:EKSKamailio/Titan/AsteriskAWSTerraformBlockchain/DLT
Earlier roles — 2014 to 2019

Selected projects

Benchmarks

Skills

Languages
JavaC/C++JavaScriptTypeScriptNode.jsPythonScalaSQL
Cloud & infra
AWSGCPAzureKubernetesDockerTerraformAnsibleGitLab:CI/CD
Data & AI
Machine LearningNeural NetworksNLPRAGModel Context ProtocolDistributed Systems
Databases
PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBDynamoDBCassandraNeo4JRedisElasticsearch
Leadership
Team buildingHiring & mentoringBudget ownershipStakeholder management

Education

B.S. Computer Science, minor in Japanese

Cum Laude · 2015
University of Pittsburgh — Pittsburgh, PA

Concentration in artificial intelligence, software engineering and algorithm design; studied abroad in Japan, spring 2015.

What people say

James is the architectural brain behind the vision of CRSTBL. He's the kind of CTO who understands the code as well as the business direction, which made my job as a developer so much easier.
Alexander Panin · Java Software Engineer, CRSTBL Inc. · verify on LinkedIn
Working with James was extremely enlightening — he took the time to explain items that were initially beyond my technical grasp, and helped newer team members understand the product down to the finer technical detail.
Robert Wardlaw · Brokerage Associate, Colliers · verify on LinkedIn
James is one of the most in-depth technologists that I have had the privilege to work with at a company. His understanding of design patterns and coding style have been a major asset to the team. James is also a great mentor of engineers and has done an excellent job of cultivating relationships in 1 on 1s. James is innovative in looking at large system design with the ability to drill down to the minute details.
Luke Coleman · VP of Software Engineering, First Orion · verify on LinkedIn
Machine-readable

This CV is queryable by AI agents.

Structured Person and Organization data, a plain-text agent index, and a live MCP endpoint — so an assistant can answer questions about my experience without scraping the page. Answer Engine Optimization is what I build; this is the demonstration.

Let's talk.

Open to CTO, VP Engineering and senior technical leadership roles from Q4 2026. I answer every email within two business days.

© 2026 James D. McMillian
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