Al Bunch

Al Bunch

Staff Engineer | AWS | Symfony | 20+ Years in SaaS

Versatile Staff Engineer with 20+ years of experience building scalable SaaS platforms and leading distributed engineering teams. Expert in AWS-native architectures, Symfony ecosystems, and containerized deployments. Proven ability to reduce cloud costs, modernize legacy systems, and lead migrations with zero downtime.

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Experience

Senior Engineer – FormAssembly

2023 -- Present

  • Providing technical guidance and mentorship to software engineering team, enforcing coding standards and CI/CD best practices
  • Enhanced internal MCP server with custom tool development, enabling automated form testing and conversational data querying
  • Implemented Redis session management and load balancing architecture for enterprise MCP server supporting AI-powered workflow automation
  • Designed client migration tools reducing platform migrations from days to less than one hour
  • Designed and implemented real-time analytics event data pipeline using AWS services (API Gateway, SQS, Fargate, OpenSearch) and Apache NiFi
PHP 8 Symfony AWS Redis MCP Servers Docker SQS OpenSearch Apache NiFi

Staff Engineer / Team Lead – Experian

2020 -- 2023

  • Managed a team of 5 developers and one QA, providing guidance through pair coding, mentorship, and proactive removal of blockers
  • Spearheaded standards for pull requests, documentation, code style, PSR compliance, and unit testing
  • Led multiple critical Symfony framework migrations (3.4 → 4.4 → 5.4) with PHP 8 compatibility, ensuring zero-downtime deployments
  • Containerized existing Symfony application and developed AWS Lambda functions, eliminating deployment bottlenecks
  • Proactively identified, tracked, and resolved technical debt improving long-term maintainability
PHP 8 Symfony AWS Lambda Docker CI/CD MySQL Team Leadership

Founder / Lead Developer – AcuCoders

2015 -- Present

  • Founded software consultancy building custom SaaS platforms, AI integrations, and automation solutions for small businesses
  • Architected and launched TC Track, a multi-tenant real estate transaction management platform (Symfony 7, React 19, AWS ECS, Stripe billing)
  • Built AI-powered form spam detection pipeline processing 1,000+ submissions with multi-layer filtering (ASN/IP blocking, heuristics, LLM analysis) at $5.25 total AI cost
  • Developed natural language query system translating plain English to SQL with automatic data visualization, featuring a novel #[AiSafe] attribute pattern for secure AI data exposure
  • Designed field service management platform for lawn care businesses with GPS time tracking, geocoded client management, and mobile-first UX
Symfony React TypeScript AWS ECS Docker PostgreSQL Stripe OpenAI Anthropic Playwright

Full Stack Developer / Team Lead – Eligibility Tracking Calculators

2017 -- 2020

  • Migrated on-prem web application to three-tier AWS solution (EC2, Multi-AZ RDS, S3, Lambda), eliminating 4 hours of monthly downtime
  • Implemented CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins/Gitlab, automating the build and QA process
  • Utilized SQS, EC2 worker instances, and MongoDB to decouple payroll record processing, significantly reducing peak processing time
  • Achieved over 50% reduction in AWS expenditure through architecture optimization
  • Migrated client uploads from EBS volumes to S3 for improved durability and cost savings
AWS EC2 RDS S3 Lambda SQS MongoDB Jenkins MySQL

PM / Lead Developer – Sonic Group

2016 -- 2017

  • Led development of custom CRM platform tailored to real estate wholesaling
  • Integrated CRM with local MLS database, address verification, and answering service
  • Built automated marketing software retrieving data from regional appraisal districts for personalized mailouts
PHP MySQL CRM API Integration

Lead Developer – British Petroleum

2006 -- 2016

  • Spearheaded development of automated Linux application deployment system distributing petrotechnical applications to 21 global sites
  • Orchestrated version releases across all sites, ensuring minimal downtime and seamless integration
  • Normalized and optimized existing MySQL databases, eliminating bottlenecks and enhancing performance
Linux MySQL Bash Python Global Deployment

Sr. Web Application Developer – Compaq / Hewlett Packard

1999 -- 2006

  • Led project team migrating and integrating 11 web-based applications onto centralized platform
  • Implemented automated server builds and test deployments using Linux, kickstart, and PXE boot
Linux PXE Boot Kickstart Perl

Skills

AWS Services
EC2 ECS RDS S3 SQS SNS Lambda API Gateway DynamoDB Route53 ECR EFS Glacier SES
Languages
PHP 7/8 JavaScript Python TypeScript Bash Perl HTML CSS
Frameworks
Symfony Laravel Django React Angular Vue jQuery Tailwind Bootstrap
AI / ML
OpenAI API Anthropic API Ollama MCP Servers Function Calling Prompt Engineering
Databases
MySQL MariaDB Postgres MongoDB DynamoDB
DevOps
Docker Kubernetes Terraform Ansible Jenkins GitHub Actions Redis ELK Splunk Nagios