James Klipp
Software Architect & Engineering Leader
Hickory, NC · JamesKlipp@gmail.com · LinkedIn · GitHub
Summary
Principal-level engineering and architecture leader with 15+ years of experience building and evolving complex enterprise systems across payments, financial services, and insurance. Experienced in distributed systems, API-first platforms, event-driven architecture, data modeling, and resilient cloud-native design. Known for translating ambiguous business problems into production-ready systems, leading cross-functional implementation, and using modern AI tooling to accelerate architecture, delivery, and engineering workflows.
Experience
Senior Solution Architect — Payments Domain
AvidXchange, Charlotte NC- Led end-to-end technical design across the Payments domain for systems processing nearly $84 billion in annual payment volume and 79M+ transactions/year, improving scalability, resiliency, and operational clarity across buyer-to-supplier payment ecosystems.
- Designed and prototyped Straight-Through Processing (STP) automation integrating directly with Stripe Connect and NMI payment APIs — enabling automated virtual card execution for 1.2M+ suppliers with ~48-hour settlement. Built the initial POC to validate viability before production commitment, including database schema design and Stripe Connect account-linking architecture.
- Architected delayed card execution flows handling compliance timing constraints where virtual card creation and execution occurred on different schedules — a real orchestration challenge requiring durable workflow patterns.
- Partnered across engineering, product, compliance, and business stakeholders to deliver event-driven payment capabilities, API-led onboarding flows, and sponsored e-payment architectures.
- Designed idempotency key patterns for payment APIs (preventing duplicate payments on POST timeouts), queue-based load leveling for webhook processing, and async API patterns with WebSocket connections for long-running backend operations.
- Facilitated 200+ cross-functional JAD sessions using quality-attribute-weighted decision matrices (not simple pro/con lists) to drive alignment on roadmap, reliability, integration, and M&A initiatives.
- Solo-built an enterprise governance platform in 3 months — 100K+ LOC with 100 PostgreSQL tables, 250+ API endpoints, and a Neo4j graph-relational hybrid data layer. Manages thousands of CI/CD pipelines, 170K+ builds, 400+ technical implementations, and 100+ domains. Shadow Draft System intercepts all write operations through admin review. AI-powered contextual chat (GPT-4.1) with page-aware knowledge base injection and LangChain pipeline gap analysis.
- Proposed enterprise queue consolidation platform replacing 12+ fragmented Salesforce-based implementations — projected $2.8M annual savings, 1,283% ROI, eliminating 15-20% status drift and reducing 30-40 min handling times to 10-15 min industry standard.
- Created the Event & Message Delivery Classification Framework (D0–D3) — a property-driven taxonomy with five delivery properties for selecting between brokers and streams, replacing "events go on Kafka" habit-picking with evidence-based technology selection.
- Diagnosed and resolved a critical Durable Functions incident where synchronous blocking on Service Bus triggers caused 30× throughput degradation and worker exhaustion. Identified anti-patterns in orchestrator awaits vs trigger/activity awaits, remediated concurrency guardrails, and restored processing from stuck message backlogs of hundreds of thousands.
- Built AI-powered proof of concept for automated check template migration — using AI to extract signatures and logos from existing issued check images and auto-generate templates for a new printer, automating template creation for thousands of buyers.
- Applied AI-assisted engineering workflows daily using Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot to accelerate C4 modeling, tradeoff analysis, architecture documentation, and system discovery.
- Mentored senior engineers and architects on CQRS, event-driven systems, long-lived workflow orchestration, and durable orchestration patterns.
Principal Solution Architect
Ally Financial, Charlotte NC- Led technical direction across investment and asset-management platforms, defining shared domain and service patterns that reduced duplication and improved consistency across multiple product teams.
- Contributed to architecture and implementation planning for robo-advisor capabilities, including logic for investment workflows, Monte Carlo projections, and portfolio operations.
- Guided system integrations and service decomposition patterns during cloud adoption and platform evolution, orchestrating migration between legacy applications and Azure services.
- Led cross-team technical decisions spanning legacy modernization, cloud adoption, security, and audit-sensitive reporting in regulated financial systems.
- Influenced service design, system boundaries, and data consistency across multiple product teams while embedding security, compliance, and audit requirements into design decisions.
Senior Application Developer
Ally Financial, Charlotte NC- Built and enhanced core investment-processing logic for rebalancing, liquidations, accruals, and tax-loss harvesting workflows across managed account operations.
- Re-engineered ETL/data-processing pipelines in C# and Dapper, improving runtime, maintainability, speed, and traceability of backend processing.
- Delivered audit-ready reporting for regulated financial workflows, supporting compliance and audit needs.
- Introduced dependency injection and modular patterns, improving separation of concerns and deployment confidence.
Senior Web Developer
Cornerstone United, Hickory NC- Single-handedly architected and built a next-gen claims management platform in 6 months, consolidating separate US and Canadian systems into a unified platform serving 6+ warranty verticals (automotive, powersports, marine, RV, HVAC, manufactured housing).
- Designed full technical stack from database schema through multi-layered backend (ASP.NET MVC) to dynamic frontend — including a real-time shadow-save draft persistence system, country-specific validation (US/Canadian), French localization, and SSO for 30+ concurrent claims associates.
- Integrated WEX payment processing for automated claims payouts with settlement confirmation tracking and reconciliation against the claims lifecycle.
- Led daily architecture and design sessions directly with CIO and executive team, driving all technical decisions while mentoring a junior developer. Passed external penetration testing on first attempt with OWASP-aligned security patterns.
Application Developer
Preferred Mutual Insurance, Norwich NY- Designed full-stack insurance applications in C#/ASP.NET supporting underwriting, claims, and billing workflows across the organization.
- Rolled out a web-based Agent Quotation system, digitizing a paper-based process and reducing quote turnaround from days to same-day.
- Modernized legacy COBOL/mainframe screens to web applications and built PDF policy generation via XSLT-to-HTML transformation pipelines.
- Collaborated on SQL Server tuning and nightly backup automation, improving reliability of production data stores across 6 years of full-stack development in a regulated insurance environment.
Education
MBA — Business Analytics & Information Technology
Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory NCB.T. — Application Software Development
SUNY College of Agriculture & Technology at Morrisville, NY- Graduated summa cum laude
- Member of Phi Theta Kappa & Omicron Delta Kappa honor societies
Certifications
- Advanced Prompt Engineering Techniques — LinkedIn Learning (2025)
- How to Boost Your Productivity with AI Tools — LinkedIn Learning (2025)
- ASP.NET: Security — LinkedIn Learning (2025)
- Delivering Results Effectively — LinkedIn Learning (2025)
Awards
- AvidXcellence Award (March 2023) — AvidXchange — Recognized for cross-functional impact across architecture, product, and engineering
- Off-site Peer Tutor of the Year (December 2009) — Morrisville State College
Skills & Technologies
Expert Advanced Intermediate