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, MA

Built 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 Area

Developed 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, MA

Psychology and Social Behavior

2013 — 2016 | University of California, Irvine

Associate's Degree in Psychology

2011 — 2013 | Marymount College

Skills & 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