Open to new opportunities
Emeka Apugo
Full Stack Platform Architect
I take AI-driven solutions from POC to production—building scalable platforms that grow with your business.
A technology leader with 15+ years building production systems at Amazon, Comcast, and high-growth startups. I specialize in taking AI-powered solutions from prototype to scale—whether that's ML pipelines, agentic workflows, or real-time inference systems running on AWS and GCP.
My strength is bridging the gap between innovation and production. I partner with customers and engineering teams to bootstrap POCs into enterprise-grade platforms—handling the full journey from architecture design through deployment, observability, and ongoing optimization. Dual-certified in AWS Solutions Architecture and Google Cloud.
Based in New York, NY & Washington D.C. Currently exploring the frontier of LLM orchestration, voice AI, and customer engineering—always expanding what's possible at the intersection of AI and scale.
About
Education
University of Colorado
M.S. Engineering Management
Penn State University
B.S. Systems Engineering
Certifications
- Google Cloud Professional Architect
- AWS Solutions Architect – Professional
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
"I believe the best AI solutions are the ones that actually ship. My approach: start with a focused POC, validate with real users, then architect for scale. Every platform I build is designed to evolve—from day-one prototype to enterprise production, without rewrites."
When I'm Not Building Platforms
Life's too short to only stare at terminals. Here's what gets me out of the house—or keeps me tinkering in the garage.
Hiking
Finding new trails and summits
Skiing
Chasing powder days
Volcano Chasing
Witnessing Earth's raw power
Surfing
Early mornings, good waves
DIY Projects
Building things with my hands
EdTech for Good
Expanding education access in remote areas
Follow along for volcano pics, mountain views, and the occasional tech rant
@mek.starrExperience
Head of Engineering
DistinctlyMktg- Leading engineering strategy and technical vision for AI-driven marketing solutions.
- Building scalable platform infrastructure to support rapid product development and customer growth.
- Establishing engineering culture, best practices, and team processes for a high-growth environment.
System Engineering Lead, Platform Architecture
Cloud9 (Symphony)- Led platform enablement for a global, security-first communication platform supporting regulated financial institutions.
- Designed Kubernetes-based hybrid cloud architectures integrating on-prem and cloud environments, reducing deployment time by 82%.
- Built reusable platform patterns and deployment workflows accelerating partner onboarding by three weeks.
- Collaborated with product and engineering teams to standardize CI/CD pipelines and secure service templates.
Co-Founder and Chief Architect
Charta Inc.- Designed cloud-native platform architecture with compliance, auditability, and scalability as first-class concerns.
- Led infrastructure threat modeling, security posture reviews, and Kubernetes hardening strategies.
- Built infrastructure automation and partner integration workflows supporting rapid iteration.
System Development Engineer, Enterprise Solutions
Amazon- Architected large-scale datacenter-to-cloud migrations supporting 1M+ server infrastructure.
- Built automation tooling that reduced migration complexity by 70%.
- Enabled internal and partner engineering teams on cloud security best practices, IAM, and compliance frameworks.
Global SRE Lead, Security & Platform Engineering
Symphony.com- Built and operated security-first cloud platforms supporting global financial services customers.
- Designed Kubernetes-backed platform architecture emphasizing resilience, observability, and compliance.
- Established platform standards, operational runbooks, and internal certification programs improving engineering readiness by 85%.
WebRTC Application Engineer
Comcast- Built secure, real-time WebRTC platforms for enterprise customers.
- Developed deployment patterns, monitoring strategies, and security models for real-time systems.
Senior Engineering Manager
nexVortex (Acquired)- Led platform engineering teams delivering carrier-grade VoIP infrastructure.
- Built internal platforms, automation tooling, and security frameworks supporting large-scale deployments.
Skills
AI & ML Infrastructure
- LLM Orchestration
- ML Pipelines
- Vector Databases
- AI Agents
Cloud Platforms
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- AWS
- Vertex AI
- Bedrock
POC to Production
- Rapid Prototyping
- Architecture Design
- Scale Planning
- Customer Engineering
Containers & Orchestration
- Kubernetes (GKE/EKS)
- Helm
- Docker
- Service Mesh
CI/CD & DevEx
- ArgoCD
- GitHub Actions
- Feature Flags
- MLOps
Observability & Security
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Datadog
- Zero Trust
Languages
Articles & Insights
Thoughts on AI infrastructure, taking ideas from POC to production, and the evolving role of customer engineering. Subscribe on Substack for updates.
From AI Demo to Production: The Architecture Decisions That Matter
Every AI POC looks impressive in a Jupyter notebook. Here's the playbook for turning that demo into a system that handles real traffic, real data, and real edge cases.
The Customer Engineer's Guide to Building Trust
Technical expertise is table stakes. What separates great customer engineers is the ability to understand business problems before proposing solutions.
LLM Orchestration Patterns That Scale
RAG, agents, tool-calling, and chains—the patterns emerging for production LLM systems. Lessons from building AI workflows that actually hold up.
Why Your AI Startup Needs a Platform Architect (Not Just ML Engineers)
ML engineers build models. Platform architects build the systems that get those models to users reliably. Here's why that distinction matters.
The POC Trap: How Premature Scaling Kills AI Projects
Over-engineering kills more AI projects than under-engineering. A framework for knowing when to stay scrappy and when to invest in infrastructure.
Building for the AI Era: What Cloud Architecture Looks Like Now
Vector stores, GPU orchestration, inference optimization—how cloud architecture is evolving to support AI-first applications.
Get in Touch
I'm currently open to new opportunities and interesting projects. Whether you have a question, want to discuss a potential collaboration, or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out!
Let's work together
I specialize in cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, and building secure, scalable platforms. If you're looking for someone to help architect your next project, I'd love to hear from you.