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Tim Dai

Objective

AI Engineer with hands-on experience shipping production AI and agent systems on AWS Bedrock — RAG pipelines, vector stores, MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, and the full-stack admin and end-user applications that consume them. Background spans backend services, frontend components, AWS infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Outside of work I write music, trade options, run a multiplayer game-server network, and have probably stayed up too late doing all four at once.

Experience

Full-Stack AI Engineer @ Essential Software Incorporated

Full-Time | October 2024 — Present

Collaborate directly with the CEO and Founder of ESI on AI and full-stack deliverables for the ESI Agentic AI Platform (EAAP) and government-contracted programs (NIH, NCI, USPTO, and others). My day-to-day is about turning AWS foundation models into production features that non-engineers can actually use.

What I work on:

  • End-to-end RAG pipelines on AWS Bedrock + Aurora PostgreSQL (pgvector): S3 document ingestion, Titan/Cohere embeddings, reranking (Amazon Rerank 1.0, Cohere Rerank 3.5), scheduled refresh via Lambda + EventBridge.

  • A Knowledge Base provisioning service that automates the full AWS lifecycle (S3 bucket creation, file upload, Bedrock KB provisioning, ingestion job orchestration, status polling) — reducing setup from ~30 minutes of manual AWS console work to a single form submission.

  • Node.js / TypeScript MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that expose retrieval tools to downstream agents, returning ranked chunks with source URIs, page numbers, and confidence scores.

  • Full-stack work on EAAP itself: agent definition system with Zod-validated configs, multi-provider LLM abstraction (AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini), prompt assembly with RAG context injection, secrets management, and conversation persistence.

  • Admin tooling (Create Knowledge Base dialog, Manage Tools page) built in SolidJS with file upload validation and live status sync against backing AWS resources.

  • Express REST APIs with multipart file upload, database schemas (Sequelize + SQL migrations), and frontend components in SolidJS, React, and Angular — all secured via OAuth2 and AWS SSO.

  • End-to-end AWS operations: IAM design, multi-account authentication (SSO), and orchestration across Bedrock, S3, Aurora, Lambda, EventBridge, ECS, ECR, Cognito, and CloudWatch.

  • Automated USPTO patent processing using AI-backed NLP pipelines, and integrated AWS Textract with Docker-deployed services to extract structured text from PDFs at scale.

  • Custom replica services with API integrations (Google Patents, SEOBot, DevHunt) for government-contracted research workflows.

  • Security review of publicly-deployed services — OAuth2, Google OAuth, and proxy-based confidentiality controls.

Cybersecurity Engineering Intern @ PPL Electric Utilities

Full-Time Internship | June 2023 — August 2023

Joined the SOC and Cybersecurity Engineering teams during their transition toward AI/ML-augmented operations on Splunk and QRadar.

  • Contributed to SIEM modernization on Splunk and QRadar; wrote Python automation and supported SOAR playbook configuration to reduce manual analyst triage.

  • Built and tested microservice APIs and containerized applications supporting internal cybersecurity tooling.

  • Supported cloud migration efforts replacing legacy on-prem systems, including a mobile application deployed for field workers.

  • Contributed to data platform and ML/analytics components feeding security and operational dashboards.

  • Built a Microsoft Teams + Power Automate workflow as part of the Financial Treasury's Key Risk Event Monitoring System (EMS) replacement; supported the Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close (FCC) implementation alongside the cybersecurity team.

  • Participated in threat identification, analysis, and mitigation work with PPL's Cybersecurity team.

Founder & Lead Engineer @ Histatu Network

Self-Employment | June 2019 — Present

Founder of the #1 Hytale server by population (Histatu Hytale, 2026–Present), succeeding Histatu Minecraft (2019–2021), which drew 225,000+ unique visitors and 4M+ hours of combined playtime across its lifespan.

Hytale (2026 — Present)

  • Administer dedicated Linux infrastructure on Pterodactyl/Docker; tuned JVM/ZGC (58 GB heap, SoftMaxHeapSize) and drove Spark flame-graph optimization that cut hot subsystems from ~8% to <1% of tick budget.

  • Authored a custom SpongePowered Mixin early-plugin (Java) patching dozens of closed-source Hytale engine bugs — cross-thread write guards, packet rate limiters, worldgen safety timeouts, ECS lifecycle fixes.

  • Maintained ASM bytecode patches for closed-source third-party plugins across version upgrades (constant-pool rewrites, method-body replacements).

  • Architected a 5-arena distributed boss-instance system with global wave-sync, per-arena state machines, and shared packet-throttle state — 5× concurrent capacity without additional hosts.

  • Contributed upstream fixes to OSS projects (EliteEssentials, SimpleEnchantments) for concurrency and entity-reference lifecycle bugs surfaced from production stack traces.

Minecraft (2019 — 2021)

  • Developed 50+ custom Java plugins on the Spigot/Bukkit API powering economy, gameplay, anti-cheat, and admin systems.

  • Operated a dedicated Bungeecord/Linux (CentOS) network across multiple VMs, supporting 500+ peak concurrent active players.

  • Integrated the Cloudflare API for firewall management, DDoS mitigation, and DNS/IP routing oversight.

  • Led a 30+ person team of developers, moderators, and admins across QA, bug triage, live-ops, and weekly planning.

Instructor @ iD Tech Camps

Seasonal Employment | June 2021 — August 2022

On-site instructor at the University of Maryland (College Park) and other locations. Taught middle- and high-school students across:

  • Minecraft Modding with Java Development

  • Minecraft Adventure and Game Design

  • Java Programming

  • AI & Neural Networks

  • Digital Music & Beats

Music Producer @ Dimotai

Self-Employment | January 2014 — Present | dimotai.com/music

Active and signed musical artist with Audiomachine and Epic Music World.

  • 50+ individual compositions, public releases, and label records — primarily EDM, Orchestral & Hybrid Trailer, and Epic genres.

  • Hundreds of placements across movie trailers, TV, news broadcasts, and commercial productions.

  • Signed with multiple labels and sponsored on promotional channels including My Soul Your Beats, ThePrimeCronus, MrEpicOSTs, and EpicMusicVN.

  • Collaborated with established artists, vocalists, and producers including Illenium, Far Out, Merethe Soltvedt, Tina Guo, Julie Elven, and Julie Seechuk.

  • 7+ years with FL Studio, iZotope Ozone, Splice, and a deep VST/Kontakt library workflow.

  • 5+ years of digital audio engineering, mastering, mixing, and sound design.

  • 10+ years of piano performance.

Founder & Club President @ Penn State Music Creators Club

Leadership & Extracurricular | August 2021 — Present

  • Founded MCC at Penn State and grew it to 200+ members spanning artists, vocalists, producers, engineers, and performers.

  • Run regular presentations, events, and educational sessions covering composition, production, and audio engineering.

  • Built collaborative relationships with related events, leadership, and partner organizations on campus.

Founder @ TTM Trading

Part-Time Entrepreneurship | August 2020 — Present | dimotai.com/investing

Active options trader, technical-analysis writer, and educator. Founded TTM Trading and previously co-founded IAT.

  • Built collaborative communities of 1,000+ active stock, options, and crypto traders, with 200+ monthly subscribers on the paid tier.

  • Manage TTM Trading's subscription business with a focus on community engagement and education driving consistent revenue growth.

  • Completed multiple small-portfolio "100x Challenges" to over 10,000% returns — starting from $1,000, $100, and $50 — using short-term volatility strategies including strangles, straddles, and minute scalps.

  • Published articles and educational content on strangle strategies, OTM/ITM common misconceptions, and indicator utilization.

  • 6+ years of live ticker and chart analysis.

  • 3+ years of options trading and technical analysis — resistance/support evaluation, Greeks-value sentiment, and indicator theory (Bollinger Bands, MACD, IC, RSI).

Skills & Environments

AI / ML Stack — AWS Bedrock, RAG, MCP (Model Context Protocol), vector databases (Aurora pgvector), embedding models (Titan, Cohere), reranking (Amazon Rerank, Cohere Rerank), multi-provider LLM abstraction (Bedrock, Gemini), prompt engineering, agent system design

Cloud / Infrastructure — AWS (Bedrock, EC2, ECS, ECR, S3, Lambda, EventBridge, IAM, Cognito, Aurora, CloudWatch, Textract, SSO), Docker, Pterodactyl, multi-account authentication

Languages — JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Python, PHP, C / C++ / C#, Assembly, SQL

Backend / Frameworks — Node.js, Express, Sequelize, REST APIs, multipart file upload, OAuth2, Google OAuth, Zod validation, SpongePowered Mixin

Frontend — React, Angular, SolidJS, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap

Databases — PostgreSQL (with pgvector), SQL, DynamoDB, Firestore, Cosmos DB

Cybersecurity / Networking — QRadar / SOAR, Splunk (SIEM), Wireshark, Nmap, threat analysis, OAuth design, Cloudflare (firewall, DDoS, DNS)

JVM / Performance — ZGC tuning, Spark flame-graph profiling, ASM bytecode manipulation, constant-pool rewrites

Music Production — FL Studio, iZotope Ozone, Splice, Kontakt libraries, mastering and mixing, audio engineering

Operating Systems — Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, CentOS

Experience Depth — 11+ yrs software dev · 7+ yrs databases · 6+ yrs OS administration · 3+ yrs SIEM and network analysis · 1.5+ yrs AWS cloud and Docker

Education

Pennsylvania State University — University Park, PA

B.S. in Cybersecurity Analytics & Operations · Class of 2024
NSA-recognized program · Center of Academic Excellence designation