James Coombs — Resume
Senior Design Engineer & AI Systems Architect
James Coombs is a Senior Design Engineer specializing in Design Systems at scale, AI Governance, and high-demand web application performance. Leverages a background in Psychology to engineer intuitive developer experiences, agentic AI workflows, and resilient front-end architecture that allows engineering organizations to move fast without breaking.
Experience
Senior Design Engineer | Founding Lead
Dec 2024 — Present | Rev — Peabody, MA- Discipline Founding: Built and scaled the Design Engineering discipline from an individual contributor role to an organization-wide standard, expanding a Radix/Tailwind component system to 62+ production components.
- AI Systems Architecture & Governance: Designed and shipped an 1,800-line codified governance layer for AI agents. Conducted empirical research (n=82) proving active, hook-based enforcement outperforms traditional static documentation by 100% in agentic workflows.
- Automated Migration Tooling: Built 12 custom CLI tools and an automated migration bot with 5-factor confidence scoring to safely transition 962+ files across 44 asset bundles.
- Performance Optimization: Overhauled Transcript Editor rendering architecture, cutting render times by 94% (Interaction to Next Paint / INP reduced from 3,297ms to 112ms) and reducing execution scripting by 57%.
- Cross-Functional Enablement: Created the "Claude Design Production" pipeline, empowering Product Managers and Designers to "vibe code" and ship production-ready prototypes directly to feature branches.
UI Developer
Jun 2020 — Sep 2024 | Cervello — Boston, MA- Technical Leadership: Led a cross-functional team of 6 front-end and full-stack engineers, driving feature delivery, code quality, performance standards, and developer mentorship.
- Dynamic Web Architecture: Architected an automated dynamic landing page generator leveraging Algolia, Cloudinary, GitLab, and custom Next.js API routes.
- API & System Design: Engineered reusable form engines integrating HubSpot and FormStack APIs, alongside a site-wide user favoriting system.
- Core Infrastructure & SEO: Managed critical WordPress core updates, established technical system documentation, and led site-wide SEO/metadata overhauls using Algolia Search.
Full Stack Web Developer
Feb 2018 — Jun 2020 | Collette- Developed content models, templates, and renderings across Sitecore-based web properties and partner sites.
- Engineered modern responsive styling, search filtering, date picker controls, and blog architecture for Explorations.com.
- Architected full-stack tour itinerary PDF generation, download, and email sharing features.
- Built a custom React and Redux interface for an internal CMS managing tour metadata, video assets, and media libraries.
Web Producer
Mar 2017 — Feb 2018 | Putnam Investments — Boston, MABuilt responsive web pages using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Freemarker Template Language (FTL), completing rapid site deployments under strict financial industry compliance deadlines.
Development Team Intern
Apr 2016 — Mar 2017 | BioSampleZone — Greater Boston AreaDeveloped an API traffic simulation test fixture for clinical sample import interfaces and conducted UX research for biological sample e-commerce platforms.
Education & Training
Full Stack Web Development Immersive
2016 | General Assembly — Boston, MAPsychology and Social Behavior
2013 — 2016 | University of California, IrvineAssociate's Degree in Psychology
2011 — 2013 | Marymount CollegeSkills & Expertise
- AI Governance (LLM Engineering)
- Performance Engineering
- Design Systems & Architecture
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- React & Next.js
- Tailwind CSS & Radix UI
- Node.js & CLI Tooling
- Algolia & Search Integration
- Cloudinary Asset Pipelines
- Sitecore & WordPress CMS
- Redux State Management
- Cross-functional Leadership
- Developer Experience (DX)
- REST APIs & Microservices
- SEO & Web Metadata