Strategic Technical Leader, Entrepreneur & Venture Architect — Building the High-Performance Systems and High-Performance Teams with AI-Augmented processes and tools utilizing Scalable Blueprints for the Future of Work.

Seasoned leader with 22+ years of experience bridging the gap between complex engineering and business value. A full-stack engineer at heart, I specialize in architecting modern SaaS platforms from the ground up and scaling engineering organizations from lean startups to teams of 80+.

• 🔭 I'm currently working on architecting a suite of next-gen SaaS tools utilizing autonomous coding agents and agentic secure software development lifecycle workflows.
• 🏗️ In Development:

•   1.) HOA management platform powered by AI tools designed to simplify community governance and financial transparency.
    2.) AI Career assistant that optimizes job transitions and professional growth through intelligent career path guidance and automation .
    3.) A high-performance travel analytics engine built to provide real-time clarity across complex pricing ecosystems.
    4.) A specialized tool for identifying and evaluating emerging opportunities in the real estate and tech markets.
  

• 🌱 Exploring: The intersection of AI and productivity—specifically autonomous coding agents (OpenClaw, Claude Code), MCP, and local LLM orchestration.
• 👯 Collaborating: Always open to discussing open-source contributions, SaaS products, entrepenurial ventures or advising innovative startups - especially tech focused startups.
• 🤔 Connecting, collaboration and conservation always welcome with like-minded entrepreneurs, investors, and software engineers.
• 💬 Ask me about: IT consulting, software engineering, technology leadership, cloud architecture, agile delivery, real estate, scaling software development teams and entrepreneurship.
• 📫 How to reach me: (803)524-2802 (cell) · aketchel@proinstincts.com (email)
• 😄 Pronouns: He / Him
• ⚡ Fun fact: I've led engineering teams across industries including fintech, nonprofit tech, freight, and insurance. Beyond the IDE, I hold real estate licenses in both North Carolina and South Carolina and an insurance license in ** South Carolina ** and am an avid supporter of nonprofits including but not limited to volunteer emergency (911) rescue organizations and local youth scouting leadership.

Leadership & Delivery

• Engineering team leadership (5–80+ engineers), veteran of agile/SAFe and "Extreme Ownership" frameworks.
• Operations: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), DevOps maturity, CI/CD strategy, post-deployment support/monitoring, performance tuning and incident management.
• Mentorship: Developing career paths for junior engineers, senior staff engineers and architects through engineering managers and directors.

Architecture & Engineering

• Full-stack: C# / .NET, Java, Python, React, Node.js, TypeScript, PHP, VB.NET, etc.
• Cloud: AWS (EC2, ECS, RDS, Aurora, Lambda, CloudWatch), Azure
• Databases: SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Oracle, DB2
• Patterns: Multi-tenant SaaS, Microservices, Event-Driven Design, RESTful APIs.

AI, ML & Future Tech

• Tools: GitHub Copilot, OpenClaw, LangChain, Ollama, Agentic Workflows, autonomous coding agents, Machine Learning, etc.
• Emerging: Exploring Quantum Finance applications and machine learning for data analysis.

DevOps, Observability & Tooling

• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, TravisCI, TFS / Jenkins, Ansible
• Monitoring: New Relic, Cloudflare, Splunk, ElasticSearch, Grafana, Pendo
• ALM: Jira (Atlassian), Azure DevOps / TFS, Git (GitHub, Bitbucket, TFS)

Other

• Entrepreneurship — founded and ran Majistic Inc. (web hosting + café) for 8 years
• Real Estate — licensed Realtor in NC & SC (Fort Mill, SC area)
• B.S. Computer Science, University of South Carolina