# Experience: James D. McMillian

Canonical page: https://mcmillian.llc/experience

## Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, CRSTBL Inc.

Los Angeles, CA. Nov 2024 to present.

- Co-founded CRSTBL to build CRSTA AI Marketing, a platform that makes structured brand and retail data discoverable by LLMs and AI assistants. This is 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.

Technologies: Java 21, Node.js, TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, AWS, GCP, Azure, Terraform, Kubernetes.

## Co-Founder, CTO and Technical Director, Centerfire Digital (formerly DifTech Services)

Austin, TX. Mar 2008 to Sep 2025. 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.

Technologies: Java, C++, MySQL, PostgreSQL, distributed systems, algorithmic trading.

## Team Leader, Senior Software Engineer, First Orion

North Little Rock, AR. Sep 2019 to Mar 2024.

- Led the microservice redesign behind First Orion's scam and spam call protection, cutting server count from 1,000 to 50 (20 times 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. Technical case study: see [Benchmarks](https://mcmillian.llc/benchmarks.md).
- 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.

Technologies: Java 11+, Kafka, Kubernetes (EKS), Kamailio, Titan, Asterisk, AWS, Terraform, blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

## Earlier roles, 2014 to 2019

- Senior Technical Project Leader, New Art Technology (Blue Wall Japan), Tokyo, 2017 to 2019
- Contract Developer, Senior SWE, Locarise, Tokyo (remote), 2016
- Research and Teaching Assistant, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, 2015
- Senior Software Engineer, GetAbby, Pittsburgh, PA, 2014

## Before 2014

Eight roles from 1989 to 2009: data recovery founder, CompUSA, GenStar, purchasing and service management.