# James D. McMillian

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

Canonical page: https://mcmillian.llc/

## Summary

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

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.

## Availability

Open to CTO, VP Engineering and senior technical leadership roles from Q4 2026.

## Key metrics

- 260M+ users served by a telecom call-verification platform
- 99.9999% uptime on critical call-verification infrastructure, measured over 24 months
- $1.9M+ per year in savings delivered across two infrastructure initiatives
- 20 times fewer servers after a microservice redesign: 1,000 down to 50
- 87% drop in scam and spam calls after a routing redesign
- 0% team turnover in year one, down from 120%

## Education

B.S. Computer Science, minor in Japanese, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. Cum Laude, 2015. Concentration in artificial intelligence, software engineering and algorithm design; studied abroad in Japan, spring 2015.

## What people say

- Alexander Panin, Java Software Engineer, CRSTBL Inc.: "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."
- Luke Coleman, VP of Software Engineering, First Orion: "James is one of the most in-depth technologists that I have had the privilege to work with at a company."
- Robert Wardlaw, Brokerage Associate, Colliers: "Working with James was extremely enlightening."

All 11 recommendations, with verification links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdmcmillian/details/recommendations/

## Contact

- Email: jdmcmillian@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdmcmillian
- Replies to every email within two business days.

## More

- [Experience](https://mcmillian.llc/experience.md)
- [Projects](https://mcmillian.llc/projects.md)
- [Skills](https://mcmillian.llc/skills.md)
- [Benchmarks](https://mcmillian.llc/benchmarks.md)
- [MCP endpoint](https://mcmillian.llc/mcp)