Josh Klein

Lead PHP/Laravel Engineer

Application Architecture, AI Systems & Legacy Modernization

📍 Huntersville, NC 28078 🌐 www.joshklein.dev ✉️ [email protected] 📞 704-779-4239

Professional Summary

Job Experience

SpecBooks – Lead Backend Engineer
March 2026 – Present
Remote
  • Lead backend engineering for data-heavy Laravel 13 / Livewire applications: architecture, reporting, analytics, and incremental modernization.
  • Set technical direction—architecture decisions, implementation plans, code review, and mentoring engineers from junior through senior.
  • Design and operate reporting against PostgreSQL and BigQuery, including schema work, query performance, and aggregation pipelines.
  • Work with product and engineering leadership to turn requirements into scoped backend work across frontend, backend, and data.
Designbyklein – Independent Application Architect & Software Engineer
Independent practice (concurrent)
Huntersville, North Carolina, US
  • Independently design, build, deploy, and maintain Laravel applications, integrations, and Linux infrastructure.
  • Local LLM inference lab: Linux GPU workstation, OpenAI-compatible endpoints, reverse proxy, and coding-agent / local AI workflows.
  • Persistent AI memory service: Laravel REST API, MySQL full-text retrieval, durable agent context.
  • Experimental game-server LLM integration (private WoW server stack) and Minecraft server operations (Linux hosting, networking, performance).
Telesource – Senior Technical Lead
July 2024 – March 2026
Huntersville, North Carolina, US
  • Architected a Laravel 11 codebase to modernize legacy PHP systems without a full rewrite.
  • Built Laravel + Livewire 3 apps with queued jobs for large SQL datasets, Excel generation, and in-browser notifications.
  • Automated invoice/document processing with LLM structured output and regex parsing into MySQL.
  • Delivered technician check-in/out integrated with internal time-tracking; maintained legacy PHP throughout the transition.
Rhino Lights LLC – Senior Technical Lead
November 2020 – July 2024
Huntersville, North Carolina, US
  • Architected a Laravel overlay on a mature CS-Cart commerce stack, keeping the legacy store operational.
  • Built transaction-safe order/cart services, B2B dealer pricing, Sanctum APIs, and an Electron dealer client.
  • Integrated Stripe (Payment Intents, saved methods, refunds, webhooks), Shippo fulfillment, and Cloudflare.
  • Designed Dell PowerEdge / Proxmox / Docker / nginx production and staging; Livewire analytics dashboard.
  • Hardware-adjacent software: lighting-controller firmware, GPIO/physical triggers, and an iOS BLE control app.
TIAA CREF – Technical Lead
October 2013 – November 2020
Charlotte, North Carolina, US
  • Led custom sales prototypes and internal tools with sales and project managers.
  • Migrated a Kohana PHP toolchain to Laravel; built Laravel + Vue.js admin systems and SSO-integrated admin.
  • Established Git workflows and code review, including transitions to offshore teams.
Duke Energy – Front End Developer
April 2013 – October 2013
Charlotte, North Carolina, US
  • Custom jQuery plugins, responsive HTML, and refactoring of legacy front-end code; GitHub-based collaboration.
Lowe's Home Improvement – Front End Developer
January 2012 – January 2013
Mooresville, North Carolina, US
  • jQuery UI work, QUnit testing, and AJAX/JSON against a Java backend in an Agile team.

Additional work history available upon request.

Technology Skill Set

Architecture: PHP 8.3/8.4, Laravel 4–13, APIs, queues/jobs, Eloquent, legacy modernization
AI: LLM APIs, structured output, agent workflows, retrieval/memory, local inference
Data: MySQL, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, SQLite, schema design, reporting, query optimization
Front end: Livewire 3/4, Blade, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Vue.js, React, jQuery
Infrastructure: Linux, nginx, Docker, Proxmox, Cloudflare, GPU inference
Commerce: Stripe, Shippo, CS-Cart, B2B/dealer systems, fulfillment APIs

Education

Art Institute of Charlotte
Associate of Applied Science: Multimedia and Web Design, March 2005
Scholarship Award to the Art Institute of Charlotte
Awarded Most Outstanding Portfolio Spring 2005

References

Available upon request