Portfolio
Brian M. VandenAkker
Generative AI Software Engineer
I build practical software systems, with a focus on AI workflows, retrieval, and reliable full-stack delivery.
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}Experience
GenAI Engineer (Contractor), MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Building and democratizing GenAI solutions. I've also co-led a technical course for 50+ researchers, providing hands-on training in building autonomous, multi-agent systems.
U.S. Marine Corps Reserves (Veteran)
Served as an infantryman and acted as an assistant intelligence chief during a year-long Indo-Pacific deployment, building leadership and adaptability under pressure.
Data Engineer
Worked on various data integration projects across four government agencies.
Selected Projects
Permit Pilot
Developed an agentic retrieval system that scrapes zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and other municipal permitting documents, then pipes them through specialized agents to produce fast, reliable feasibility reports.
Localize
An operating system for local service businesses: build reliable, SEO-optimized websites in minutes by prompting an agent; intake and manage orders and service requests through a complete CRM; run automated marketing campaigns; and use agents to manage parts inventory.
West End Firewood
Built the online presence for West End Firewood, including a full CRM and operations workflow; the platform has contributed to more than $500,000 in additional annual sales since launch.
Life Progress
A fun design project where you can track your life goals in a GitHub-style tracker and build a colorful dashboard showing your progress through life.
Things Past
My first full project: a place to share family history through images and videos, build family trees, and invite family members to share old photos. Like Instagram without the feed—one large repository of family photos that are taggable and searchable by family. Write family updates and learn about your past. Later sunset to reduce operating costs.
Working Areas
- Retrieval and Knowledge Systems
RAG workflows, document processing, chunking and indexing strategy, retrieval quality tuning
- Agent Architecture
Multi-agent systems, A2A coordination patterns, tool routing, and task decomposition
- Structured Prompting
Prompt design, few-shot patterns, system instruction tuning, and output formatting for reliable parsing
- Context and Tooling Protocols
Model Context Protocol (MCP), structured tool interfaces, and context-aware workflow design
- Production Reliability
Long-running agent infrastructure, observability, guardrails, and fault-tolerant execution patterns
Education
- M.S. Applied Economics, Boston College
- B.A. Economics, Merrimack College
- B.S. Finance, Merrimack College
- Minor in Mathematics, Merrimack College
About
- Family oriented and loving life with a new baby in the house.
- Grew up on a farm where I learned about hard work.
- Real estate investor.
- Extensive travel across South America, East Asia, and Europe.