Charles Deane
Backend & Systems Engineer

Professional Summary

Systems-oriented backend engineer serving as the sole technical owner of a production platform within a regulated financial advisory firm.

Architected the firm’s internal technology stack supporting 12 financial advisors daily. The platform directly enabled $30M in new AUM within its first three months of production use.

Experience spans application architecture, data systems, infrastructure, and compliance boundaries. Focused on shipping practical systems that improve business workflows while maintaining durability, security, and long-term maintainability. Increasingly engaged in responsible AI integration within regulated environments.

Technical Profile

Languages

Go, Python, SQL, Java, JavaScript / TypeScript, Rust (learning)

Backend & Data Systems

PostgreSQL (schema design, indexing strategy, query optimization)
SQL-based reporting and migration workflows
ChromaDB
REST APIs, gRPC
Data ingestion and automation pipelines

Web & Application Layer

Internal dashboards and business tooling
Frontend development for advisor-facing systems
Designed and deployed current firm’s public website

Infrastructure

Kubernetes (k3s), Cilium (eBPF networking) OCI containerization
GitHub Actions CI/CD
OIDC/JWT-based service authentication
HAProxy, NGINX

Systems & Architecture

Service boundary design
Backpressure and graceful shutdown
Write-ahead logging and replication semantics
Observability-first system design
Syscall-efficient I/O patterns

Networking & Security

VPN configuration, routing, firewall segmentation
Zero-trust internal service patterns

Experience

Founding Engineer

FirstRise Investments | Stamford, CT
Sep 2024 – Present

Primary technical decision-maker responsible for architecture, implementation, and operation of the firm’s internal systems.

Platform & Business Impact

• Designed and implemented the firm’s internal CRM and operational tooling platform from the ground up.
• System adopted by 12 advisors and integrated into daily workflow.
• Directly supported $30M in new AUM within the first three months of use.
• Work directly with advisors and leadership to align technical priorities with revenue and compliance goals.
• Deliver iterative improvements with short feedback loops while maintaining production stability.

Backend & Data Engineering

• Develop backend services in Go supporting client management, reporting, compliance tracking, and automation.
• Lead PostgreSQL schema design, indexing strategies, and migration planning for sensitive PII data of over 50,000 prospects.
• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks in production.
• Build Python-based automation tools and data ingestion workflows for reconciliation, research, and reporting.
• Integrate third-party financial APIs into internal systems.

AI & Retrieval System Deployment

• Designed and deployed an on-prem Retrieval-Augmented Generation system to support advisor research and document analysis.
• Implemented local embedding models and LLaMA-based inference to ensure data remained within firm infrastructure.
• Built Python-based ingestion pipelines with semantic chunking and ChromaDB vector storage.
• Deployed via OCI containers within the Kubernetes cluster.
• Logged queries to PostgreSQL for audit visibility.
• Prioritized rapid, compliant deployment to prevent use of non-approved external AI tools.
• Designed graceful fallback behavior to avoid workflow disruption.

Infrastructure & Operational Governance

• Built and maintain a bare-metal production Kubernetes cluster using k3s.
• Migrated CNI from Flannel to Cilium for improved layer 7 observability and traffic control using eBPF.
• Established CI/CD workflows enabling repeatable, low-friction deployments.
• Implement structured logging and health monitoring.
• Own production troubleshooting across application, data, and infrastructure layers.

Security & Regulatory Context

• Design systems assuming FINRA-regulated data handling requirements.
• Implement role-based access controls and service-level authentication.
• Maintain secure multi-site connectivity and segmented network boundaries.
• Apply prior financial advisory experience to technical risk assessment and system safeguards.

Previous Experience

Financial Advisor

Equitable Advisors | Milford, CT
Jun 2023 – May 2024

• Operated within a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer environment.
• Developed practical understanding of compliance workflows, audit expectations, and operational risk.
• Experience directly informs architectural decisions around data access and failure modes.

Selected Independent Projects

pgWarden | PostgreSQL Wire-Protocol Proxy

Compliance-oriented PostgreSQL boundary proxy written in Go, designed to enforce data-access policies in regulated environments without requiring application-level rewrites.

• Terminates TLS and mTLS connections at the database boundary.
• Enforces masking and policy controls at the connection layer without SQL rewriting.
• Built with emphasis on correctness, observability, and secure data handling.
• Production-ready data-plane component.

LankaDB | Distributed Key-Value Store (Rust, In Progress)

Early-stage distributed key-value store written in Rust, motivated by performance constraints encountered while deploying on-prem AI retrieval systems.

• Persistent TCP protocol with structured framing.
• Write-ahead logging for durability.
• Asynchronous replication model.
• Designed with syscall-efficient I/O patterns and kernel-level awareness.
• Focused on enabling scalable AI retrieval and caching workloads in constrained and distributed environments.

Education

Bachelor of Science | Computer Science

Western Governors University | Expected 2026

Licenses

FINRA Series 7
FINRA Series 66