# Tristan Sturgess

> Software engineer based in Vancouver, BC. Background in electrical engineering (B.Eng. Electrical Engineering, University of Victoria); work spans large-scale distributed systems (Amazon Web Services, S3) and production applied AI and RAG systems.

- Role: Senior Software Engineer
- Location: Vancouver, BC
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristansturgess

## Site
- [Home](https://tristansturgess.com/): single-page portfolio
- [Full text](https://tristansturgess.com/llms-full.txt): all site content in one file

## Experience
- Unblocked — Software Engineer (Sep 2025 – Apr 2026): Enterprise RAG over live SaaS integrations
- Cornerstone Planning Group — AI Product Engineer (Consulting) (Jan 2025 – Aug 2025): Solo engineer building a custom retrieval system over disorganized historical documents
- MDA Space — Senior Software Developer (Dec 2023 – Aug 2025): Led a team of engineers and domain experts working on C++ enhancements for satellite ground-segment systems
- Amazon Web Services — Software Development Engineer, S3 (Jul 2021 – Nov 2023): Designed high-throughput systems on native AWS infrastructure
- ACD Systems — Software Developer (May 2014 – Jun 2021): Developed multiple features for a real-time C++ photo editor

## Selected work
- [From AI Ambition to Useful Product](https://tristansturgess.com/work/from-ai-ambition-to-useful-product): Scoping a broad stakeholder goal into a focused first release
- [Agent Workflow DSL](https://tristansturgess.com/work/agent-workflow-dsl): Token-efficient DSL to replace JSON queries and cut token usage in half
- [S3 Cost Optimization](https://tristansturgess.com/work/s3-cost-optimization): Architectural redesign of a high-throughput AWS S3 service

## Sections
- Intro
- Featured Work
- Experience
- About
- Contact