John Micah Miguel

Senior Full Stack & AI Engineer | AWS • Backend • Cloud Architecture

Senior engineer specializing in full-stack product development, backend architecture, and cloud infrastructure, with a recent focus on generative AI and shipping AI-powered products end-to-end. 10+ years across high-scale consumer platforms, regulated SaaS, and client-facing engagements where I own the technical decisions and the delivery.

Technical Skills

Focus: System Design, Software Architecture, Cloud Infrastructure, DevOps, Full-stack Product Engineering, Real-time Systems, Agentic AI, Microservices, API Integrations
Backend: Node.js, NestJS, Python, REST, WebSockets, Stripe, Agora RTC
Cloud: AWS (ECS Fargate, Lambda, SQS, CloudFront, WAF, CodePipeline, Step Functions, S3, Route 53), AWS CDK, SST, GCP, Azure, Docker
Data: MongoDB Atlas, PostgreSQL, Firebase, Prisma, Mongoose
AI: Vercel AI SDK, MCP, Inngest, LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini), RAG, Vector Embeddings, Prompt Engineering, Agent Skills and Orchestration
Platform: Kafka, Kubernetes
Frontend: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Next.js, React Native, Flutter

Selected Achievements

  • Scaled a Web3 SocialFi platform past 1M+ users with 64% day-one retention, holding production stable through sustained DDoS and financial-endpoint brute-force campaigns.
  • Cut total platform spend by ~65%, including bringing Firebase from ~$3,000/mo to ~$350/mo (~87%) and reverting MongoDB Atlas from M30 back to M10 through indexing, listener placement, and aggregation pipeline rewrites.
  • Designed a multi-chain Web3 payment layer spanning EVM (Ethereum, Polygon, Abstract L2), Solana, and TON, with SQS FIFO deduplication and database-level idempotency that made replay and double-credit attempts provably impossible.
  • Shipped AI-powered products end-to-end, including a RAG-powered authoring platform built on the Vercel AI SDK with vector embeddings, prompt engineering, and per-stage agent skills.
  • Led a cross-functional team of up to 8 engineers across 40+ client projects, standardizing the delivery workflow (estimation, sprint planning, code review, staged releases) and cutting post-launch rework by ~30%.

Professional Experience

AkyladeSenior Software Engineer, AI Systems

Oct 2024 – Present
  • Lead engineer across Akylade's SaaS portfolio, partnering directly with the founders on a growing suite of products: Akylade, an ISO 17024 cybersecurity certification platform with separate member, ATP partner, and admin portals, MirrorIQ, a privacy-first GRC platform covering NIST, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP workflows, and KDP Book Creator, an AI-powered authoring platform for Amazon KDP.
  • Built a Stripe catalog integration layer that syncs Stripe products into the application database, with an internal management surface for enabling or disabling products and granting per-user entitlements layered on top of the synced catalog.
  • Built an LTI plugin for Moodle and Canvas that lets ATP partners deliver Akylade courses directly inside their institutional LMS, so students consume the content in the learning environment their school already runs.
  • Architected KDP Book Creator, an AI-powered authoring platform that takes users from ideation through outline, drafting, polishing, and export to Amazon KDP. Designed the agentic pipeline end-to-end: vector embeddings and RAG for context retrieval, the Vercel AI SDK for model orchestration, and prompt engineering with per-stage agent skills driving each authoring step.
  • Maintained code standards and security practices across the product suite.
Case study: Akylade PlatformCase study: MirrorIQ

MetaverseGoLead Backend & Cloud Engineer

Oct 2021 – Oct 2024
  • Owned the backend API, cloud infrastructure, and Web3 payment stack for Playfriends, a SocialFi platform with live voice and video lobbies, virtual gifting, and creator bookings that reached 1M+ users with 64% day-one retention.
  • Architected and operated the production stack on ECS Fargate (behind CloudFront and AWS WAF), with SQS FIFO providing ordered, exactly-once processing for financial flows, Lambda for asynchronous webhook ingest, MongoDB Atlas as the system of record, and Firebase RTDB carrying live lobby state. Entire infrastructure defined in AWS CDK, with zero manual console changes in production.
  • Designed a multi-chain payment layer spanning EVM (Ethereum, Polygon, Abstract L2), Solana, and TON behind a single adapter interface, abstracting per-chain SDKs, transaction models, and finality semantics so the rest of the platform integrates payments and custodial wallet flows without any per-chain branching.
  • Cut total platform spend by ~65% at peak load. Re-architected the Firebase realtime data layout to eliminate over-broad reads and writes, taking it from ~$3,000/mo to ~$350/mo (~87%). Restructured MongoDB read paths and aggregation pipelines to run on covered queries, dropping the cluster from M30 back to M10 with no performance regression.
  • Held the platform stable through sustained DDoS and brute-force campaigns using WAF rate-based rules scoped per endpoint group, IP reputation lists, autoscaling policies tuned to absorb sudden traffic spikes, and application-level safeguards on sensitive flows.
Case study: Playfriends

Sidekick DigitalLead Solutions Architect

Jun 2019 – Sep 2021
  • Lead architect for Housing Hand, the UK's leading rental guarantor service. Owned the backend architecture end-to-end across a 4+ year engagement, leading a team of 4 developers and 1 QA.
  • Designed a GDPR-compliant backend processing sensitive applicant data through multi-party approval workflows across tenants, guarantors, and accommodation providers, integrating third-party credit check and identity verification providers into the core verification pipeline.
  • Owned the technical relationship with the client, translating executive stakeholder requirements into architecture decisions, sprint plans, and delivery commitments for the engineering team.
  • Mentored the engineering team through architecture reviews and pairing on complex engineering work, serving as the escalation point for technical decisions throughout the engagement.

AppVenture Inc.Head of Engineering

May 2014 – May 2019
  • Led a cross-functional team of up to 10 engineers delivering mobile and web projects across 4–5 concurrent client engagements, with 40+ projects shipped over the tenure.
  • Standardized the delivery workflow (estimation, sprint planning, code review, staged releases) across the team, cutting post-launch rework by ~30% and establishing a predictable delivery cadence across concurrent client engagements.
  • Owned the full client lifecycle beyond technical delivery: bidding, scoping, contract negotiation, and stakeholder communication through delivery and post-launch support, sustaining multi-year engagements with anchor clients.

Smartwave StudiosAPI Developer

May 2012 – Apr 2014
  • First engineering role, joining a small product team as the in-house API research contact during the industry's shift from SOAP to REST. Evaluated emerging conventions around resource modeling, JSON vs XML payloads, OAuth adoption, and API versioning, building proof-of-concept services and shipping early-stage RESTful endpoints on the product.

Education

Mapua Malayan Colleges Laguna

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

2008 – 2012

Certifications