Tristan Sturgess

Tristan Sturgess

Senior Software Engineer

Building reliable AI workflows and scalable distributed systems.

  • Vancouver, BC

Featured Work

I’ve had the chance to work on some really interesting projects. These are some of my favourites.

Experience

  1. Sep 2025 – Apr 2026

    Unblocked

    Software Engineer

    Enterprise RAG over live SaaS integrations

    • Kotlin
    • Python
    • LLMs
    • MCP
    • PostgreSQL
  2. Jan 2025 – Aug 2025

    Cornerstone Planning Group

    AI Product Engineer (Consulting)

    Solo engineer building a custom retrieval system over disorganized historical documents

    • Python
    • OpenAI
    • pgvector
    • Cohere Rerank
    • Celery
  3. Dec 2023 – Aug 2025

    MDA Space

    Senior Software Developer

    Led a team of engineers and domain experts working on C++ enhancements for satellite ground-segment systems

    • C++
    • Python
    • Docker
    • GitLab CI
  4. Jul 2021 – Nov 2023

    Amazon Web Services

    Software Development Engineer, S3

    Designed high-throughput systems on native AWS infrastructure

    • Java
    • Distributed Systems
    • Kinesis
    • IAM
  5. May 2014 – Jun 2021

    ACD Systems

    Software Developer

    Developed multiple features for a real-time C++ photo editor

    • C++
    • Direct2D
    • DirectX11
    • HLSL

About

As an engineer, my favourite thing is understanding systems well enough to make them do what I want. That pulled me from electrical engineering to distributed systems and all the way to space. Now I use my understanding of scalable backend engineering to build high-quality AI systems.

Contact

If you’ve got an interesting engineering or applied AI role you think I’d be a good fit for, send me a message on LinkedIn.