Kevin J. Rice

Kevin J. Rice

Software Engineer · AI-Native Developer · Co-Founder

35+ years of highly technical software engineering — backend application development, data engineering, DevOps and InfoSec, primarily in Python, Perl and C/C++. Fully invested in Claude/AI development cycles: planning, skill creation, architecture and implementation with AI toolsets. Currently co-founder of a stealth AI startup building agentic AI RAG document search and an autonomous, self-improving, massively parallel “dark factory” build system, after a run of Python InfoSec work at Bank of America.

Crystal Lake, Illinois B.S. Computer Science, University of Kansas

Resume

Full resume in PDF, Word or HTML, plus a detailed employment history. Updated October 12, 2026.

Primary Languages

Python · 20+ yrs Perl C C++ SQL Java Bash / Zsh

AI Toolsets

Claude GitHub Copilot Codex Grok Ollama MCP RAG pg_vector pg_textsearch Apache AGE Skills & instruction authoring Code generation

Cloud & DevOps

AWSLambda S3EC2ECS GCPCloud Composer AirflowDocker JenkinsNginx OpenTelemetryPrometheus Tailscale

Databases

MongoDB · 7 yrs Postgres · 7 yrs SnowflakeBigQuery MySQLOracle SybaseCassandra RedisSQLite

Frameworks & Testing

DjangoFastAPI FlaskPySpark pytestpytest-BDD behaveRobot Framework SQLAlchemy

Domains

InfoSecETL Data engineeringCapital markets Retail / e-commerceHealthcare Time series & monitoring Embedded real-time

Experience

Recent roles. Earlier work is in the downloadable employment history.

Aug 2026 — Present

Co-Founder

Stealth AI Startup · Chicago, IL (Remote)
  • Architected and built, largely through Python code generation, a RAG document store with an MCP and REST web front end and hybrid pg_vector / pg_textsearch retrieval over Apache AGE.
  • Built a true-horizontal-scale, self-improving “Dark Factory” build system.
  • Stack: Claude, Codex and Grok code generation, MCP, Docker, Ollama with Qwen and Gemma, PostgreSQL, OpenTelemetry, Tailscale, Prometheus.
Feb 2026 — Aug 2026

Sr. Software Engineer

Bank of America (Apex Consulting) · Chicago, IL
  • Python InfoSec on internal email malware detection and triage — new features and security-scan remediation, mostly via code generation with GitHub Copilot.
  • Migrated the application, and its test suite, from Django to FastAPI.
  • Mentored the team on AI-assisted development; authored skills and instruction sets for several projects.
Dec 2021 — Feb 2026

Sr. Software Engineer

Cognizant · Chicago, IL (Remote)
  • Capital One — ETL on AWS Lambda supporting SWIFT/Fedwire payments (ISO 20022 migration).
  • UK National Health Service — Python 2.6 → 3.6 migration across a 400,000-line codebase.
  • Duke Energy — workflow automation with AWS Lambdas (POC/MVP).
  • Chewy — data engineering in AWS Snowflake. Macy's — gift registry, mainframe to AWS.
Mar 2021 — Dec 2021

Data Architect

Zoro / Grainger · Chicago, IL (Remote)

Architecture and development of Python ETL for online-retail product data on Google Cloud — Airflow, BigQuery, Composer, Spark, MongoDB.

Jul 2020 — Mar 2021

Sr. Developer

Zipari (Synergy Consulting) · Brooklyn, NY (Remote)

Python architecture and development on a B2B/B2C Django application hosting medical insurance industry clients.

Aug 2019 — Jul 2020

Sr. Developer

PNC Bank (Indotronix Consulting) · Chicago, IL (Remote)

Python backend development and Django automation; DevOps server provisioning in in-house data centers.

Aug 2018 — Aug 2019

Sr. Software Engineer

Bank of America (Apex Consulting) · Chicago, IL

Python architecture, development and maintenance on capital markets deal aggregation processes, including a Python 2.7 to 3.7 conversion on BofA's Quartz toolset.

Mar 2018 — Aug 2018

Senior Software Engineer

Engine Media Group · Chicago, IL

Python 2.7 and 3.7 AWS Lambda functions; business analysis and specifications; infrastructure and InfoSec analysis on AWS (Route53, S3, EC2).

Apr 2012 — Feb 2018

Principal Software Engineer

Sears Holdings · Hoffman Estates, IL
  • Architect and technical team lead for a team of 8, monitoring all 12,000 Sears servers.
  • Scaled enterprise metrics collection from 1M to 15M metrics per minute.
  • Built a new MongoDB data warehouse served through Django and Graphite.
  • Sat on the 25-person corporate infrastructure architecture committee, including the AWS migration.
Earlier roles — 1993 to 2012
Aug 2011 — Apr 2012

Software Engineer

Nokia / Navteq Garmin (Consultant) · Chicago, IL

Python libraries for Robot Framework test scripts; QA automation suites for newly developed Java/JMX code.

Jun 2010 — Aug 2011

Lead Trade Support Analyst

Citadel · Chicago, IL

Supported a desk handling 6% of US equities and options markets. Perl and Python trading-desk automation, FIX protocol troubleshooting, and a rewrite of FINRA OATS compliance processing.

Feb 2005 — May 2010

Sr. Software Engineer / Architect

Textura · Deerfield, IL

Employee #5 of a now publicly listed construction-industry SaaS company. Python architecture and development of large portions of the main application, weekly agile releases with TDD, Postgres and SQLAlchemy.

Apr 2002 — Jan 2005

Lead Application Developer

Bank One / JP Morgan Chase · Chicago, IL

Architected a Capital Markets risk data warehouse feeding the CEO and Board. Wrote 40,000 lines of Perl doing ETL of 350+ files into Sybase, later Oracle.

May 1993 — Apr 2002

Sr. Software Architect / Developer — Consulting

Various companies · Des Moines, IA and Chicago, IL

Single-sign-on bond-purchasing site for UBS; version control for a 140-person team at Sears.com; $250M in savings identified for Sears Credit through improved credit scoring; a real-time embedded C PID controller for a gas-pipeline turbocompressor.

Contact

Best reached by text with purpose of call, incl. tech stack required.