About Coding Rowing Math Projects Resume

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JOHN PEARSON, Ph.D.

github.com/johnpphd|linkedin.com/in/johnpphd

Overview

Senior software engineer shipping production AI and DeFi systems at scale. Currently consulting across three AI products at Playground: Pegasus (multi-agent marketing reporting), the 9M-user image platform, and Alice (SMS-based AI assistant). Previously sole owner of a 4-product DeFi portfolio (80K peak DAU, $70B+ volume, 6 chains, 12 repos, 4,226 commits). Full-stack generalist comfortable across frontend, backend, infra, and AI integration. CTO: "The kind of engineer you build a company around." Ph.D. Mathematics. Built a Claude Code agent swarm (100+ subagents) for engineering throughput.

Experience

Senior Software Engineer (Contract) Mar 2026 – Present
Playground.ai (Pegasus + Image Platform + Alice) Remote
  • Pegasus (production runtime agent swarm for marketing reporting): built a 7-layer architecture harness (Context, Harness, Handoff, Verification, Cost, Orchestration, Learning) on AG-UI for streaming agent events and A2UI for generative UI surfaces. Orchestrator plus sub-agents fill weekly performance templates from Meta Ads and Google Ads data with audit-trail provenance and journal-based wire assertions
  • Playground (9M-user AI image generation platform): shipped new image tools, hardened payments lifecycle, contributed to core product reliability
  • Alice (SMS-based AI assistant with persistent memory, voice, and tool use): led production-readiness overhaul (Cloud Run, BullMQ, pgvector), built multimodal messaging (images, voice memos, TTS), waitlist/upgrade flow, eval framework, and CI pipeline
  • Cross-product infrastructure: unblocked production deploys by fixing Docker builds, Cloud Build secrets, and PGBouncer auth across all three products
Senior Software Engineer Feb 2022 – May 2026
Nexus Labs (Maverick Protocol) Remote
  • Primary engineer for Maverick Protocol (DeFi AMM) and 3 additional DeFi products. 80K peak DAU, ~3M users, $70B+ cumulative volume, 6 chains, 12 repos, 121 production releases, 4,226 commits
  • Sole owner of V2 stack: 98% of API and 73% of frontend by code volume. CTO: "He effectively owned the entire stack."
  • Built V1 API from scratch under live production traffic as app grew from 500 to 22K DAU. Ran dual-track V1-to-V2 migration without downtime while V1 served 15K+ DAU
  • Built 49 Datadog dashboards (cron health, swap analytics, pricing data, RUM). Served external API consumers including CoinGecko, EtherFi, and Dune Analytics
  • Hardened Ponder indexer: 4x speedup, crash loop fixes, memory leak patches. Consolidated multi-repo codebase (585 commits)
  • Built 3 additional DeFi products: ve(3,3) voting/incentives platform, ERC-4626 vault protocol with cross-chain support, and an AMM frontend (sole author, 18 days)
  • Built a Claude Code agent swarm (100+ subagents) for engineering throughput and architecture enforcement
Head Masters Women's Coach Sep 2012 - Present
Atlanta Rowing Club Atlanta, GA

Coach a team of 20-25 adult women • #1 club nationally (2025) • 15+ National Championships (2021-present)

Founder June 2015 – Aug 2023
Illuminotes LLC (illuminot.es) Atlanta, GA

Founded an LLC and built an interactive EdTech platform providing structured digital study notes for physics courses • React, Redux, Firebase (Auth, Realtime DB, Hosting, Cloud Functions), KaTeX/MathJax for LaTeX rendering, markdown content pipeline • Udemy course with 250+ students and active revenue • Used as companion material in own physics courses at Pace Academy

Science Dept. Chair & Upper School CS, Math, & Physics Teacher Aug 2008 - June 2023
Pace Academy Atlanta, GA

Managed a department of 10 • Taught AP and Honors classes at every grade level • Built a multi-year statistical analysis in R of ~3M data points across 100K+ student records, with interactive Shiny dashboards, presented to administration to improve equity and decision-making

Education

Ph.D. in Mathematics, Minor in Physics July 2008
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA

Thesis: The Noncommutative Geometry of Ultrametric Cantor Sets

B.A. in Mathematics May 2002
Dartmouth College Hanover, NH

Honors & Awards

Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, Georgia Institute of Technology (2009) • 5 teaching fellowships including the Loridans Academic Fellowship (5-year) and Crawford Endowment for Excellence (3-year)

Publications

Published in the American Mathematical Monthly (2018) and the Journal of Noncommutative Geometry (2009). Ph.D. Thesis: "The Noncommutative Geometry of Ultrametric Cantor Sets" (Georgia Tech, 2008).

Languages & Technologies

Frontend:
React TypeScript Next.js Vite JavaScript HTML/CSS React Query MUI
Web3:
Wagmi Viem Ethers.js Ponder
AI:
Claude Code Multi-Agent Orchestration MCP Servers Prompt Engineering
Infra:
Datadog Hono Node.js Vercel Firebase Git
Familiarity:
Solidity R French