Projects
The projects I've worked on over 25+ years cover the gamut from VB6 data entry systems to mobile applications, C# web apps, and VB.NET/C# WinForms applications. These days it's AI-enabled, serverless applications on AWS.
AI Acquisition Tools (Falcon Logic Products)
I'm the architect and lead developer of two multi-tenant SaaS platforms for federal acquisition, both built on .NET 10 Lambdas with Angular frontends and defined entirely as infrastructure-as-code.
BidMore WinMore
AI opportunity intelligence for federal contractors. It harvests SAM.gov and GSA eBuy around the clock, uses Claude on Amazon Bedrock to summarize each solicitation and score it against the company's capability profile, and drafts RFI responses as Word documents. Product flyer (PDF)
AWS architecture
- Nested CloudFormation stacks for dev/test/prod: 16 .NET 10 Lambdas behind an API Gateway REST API with a Cognito authorizer
- Event-driven analysis pipeline: DynamoDB Streams → filtered dispatcher Lambda → SQS → worker, with DLQs, partial-batch failure reporting, and concurrency caps
- Serverless harvester: EventBridge Scheduler planner fans out per-tenant SQS work, with time-budget guards that checkpoint instead of timing out
- DynamoDB on-demand with PITR, GSIs per access pattern, and per-tenant tables provisioned at signup
- Per-tenant secret isolation: SSM SecureStrings under a customer-managed KMS key, read through an STS session policy scoped to a single tenant
- Provider-neutral LLM layer over Bedrock (Claude via cross-region inference profiles, plus open-weight models) with a model catalog governing routing and per-call token/cost telemetry
- Least-privilege IAM (a role per function plus a permissions boundary), Cognito TOTP MFA, WAFv2 rate limiting, CloudFront with Origin Access Control, SES, CloudWatch alarms to SNS
- GitLab CI with security gates (osv-scanner, gitleaks, semgrep, cfn-lint) and Playwright/axe end-to-end tests; Stripe subscription billing
LevelUp
Source-selection-grade AI proposal evaluation. LevelUp reads every offeror volume against the solicitation's Section M criteria and returns citation-backed findings and ratings. It runs as a hosted SaaS or self-hosted in a customer's own AWS account, including GovCloud and air-gapped regions, on open-weight models the customer controls. Product flyer (PDF)
AWS architecture
- Entire platform in AWS CDK (C#): 10+ stacks per environment, with cdk-nag gating and template assertions in unit tests
- Multi-partition deployment (commercial, GovCloud, ISO) plus a bootstrapless CloudFormation deploy path for restricted accounts
- Step Functions evaluation pipeline using Distributed Map with data-driven concurrency and catch paths on every branch, running .NET 10 Lambda workers
- Self-hosted inference: GPU EC2 Auto Scaling groups running Ollama that scale to zero, with AMIs baked by EC2 Image Builder
- GPU cost guardrails: idle scanner, CloudWatch GPU metrics and alarms, AWS Budgets, and an SNS-driven circuit breaker
- DynamoDB lease/FIFO broker that shares GPU model capacity across evaluations
- Amazon Bedrock (InvokeModel, Converse, and the OpenAI-compatible Mantle endpoint) and OpenAI as opt-in providers; Textract OCR; hybrid RAG (vector + BM25) in the VPC
- Cognito with TOTP MFA or PKI mutual-TLS authentication via API Gateway or ALB, with a custom authorizer, certificate thumbprint lookup, and scheduled CRL refresh
- WAFv2 managed rules and rate limits, VPC endpoints, least-privilege IAM built and unit-tested as code, and NIST 800-53 ATO documentation checked for drift in CI
- GitLab CI/CD: build, test, security scan,
cdk deploy, post-deploy health and OWASP ZAP checks, and Playwright end-to-end tests
IC Programs
Procurement System
I'm the lead developer/architect of a 6 person dev team on a procurement & solicitation system similar to FedBizOpps. This is an Angular SPA frotnend with a dotnet WebApi REST backend and SQL Server. This is iteration three of this system. We replaced a legacy system based on ColdFusion/Oracle starting in 2011 with a C# WebForms application. Now we are upgrading that application to the Angular/dotnet stack. The system is responsible for handling procurements for most of the IC.
Evaluation Tool
I'm also the lead on the development and sustainment of an evaluation tool for proposals. This tool is also built in the Angular/dotnet stack and has been in operation since 2018. It evaluates approximately 40 programs per year.
Subcontract System
I'm a system architect and developer on a subcontract reporting system. This system gathers subcontracting data from small businesses and large primes for the IC.
Web Exams MVC App
I created a simple C# ASP.Net MVC web app using Twitter bootstrap for theming so that we could load exam dumps and take practice exams (e.g., I had to pass my Security + as quickly as possible).
Docker Microservices
Building docker microservices in C# for deployment to Azure & AWS. Built a dotnetcore microservice to fetch weather quotes from Yahoo and expose a rest API for that data.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate. This site is on AWS! It demonstrates the following technologies:
- Google Recaptcha
- Static website hosting in S3 buckets
- S3 bucket redirects for www.brettjohnson.name, brettjohnson.me, www.brettjohnson.me to brettjohnson.name
- Route 53 DNS
- CloudFront SSL distribution
- SES email service
- AWS Lambda for forwarding SES emails to a non-SES address
Mobile Optimized Applications
Region Alert
I build an Apache Cordova mobile application for the Android platform called RegionAlert as a prototype for a government customer. This application's objective was to allow the collection of geospatially coordinated intelligence data and then allow that intelligence to be pushed to mobile subscribers in real time. In other words, a user could indicate there was a fire at x/y lat/long, and then other users would receive that intelligence when they came within a specified radius of that geolocation. A central service stored all the notifications in a SQL Server database and was called from the mobile device using a C# REST Api. Google cloud messaging was used to push notifications to the mobile device.
Talon/MediaSnap
I built a mobile optimized, offline, cached HTML5 mapping application, MediaSnap as a prototype for a government customer. The purpose of this application was to allow agents in the field to annotate a cached offline map in a zero-install Android and web browser application. I built a HTML5 website that was cached using an application manifest. On logging in and specifying a region of interest it would cache map tiles in local storage from a OSM (OpenStreetMap) provider. The map was rendered using leaflet.js and I wrote several custom plugins to allow collection of data. The map supports textual, freehand drawing, photographic and video annotations. While the application is offline, the annotations are stored in local storage. Once comms are obtained, the application syncs with the central server using a C# REST Api. Once online, any annotations collected by other users in your geospatial region of interest are automatically pushed to you, cached offline, and displayed on your map for current and future consumption.
Selected Web & Desktop Applications
InfoPoll Enterprise
I was contracted to be the lead developer for InfoPoll Enterprise, an application used to automate data collection from mail extraction machines. Uses OPC to integrate with data collectors on these machines. WinForms VB.NET frontend.
InfoPoll Web Warehouse
After success with InfoPoll Enterprise, was contracted to build InfoPoll Web Warehouse, a C# MVC web based system for warehouse management. The system generates and parses QR codes for warehouse inventory (boxes/pallets/etc) tracking and reporting. The system integrates with LDAP for custom authentication.
Donation Processing
Built a donation processing application suite for my prior firm Synetech. This was a C#, VB.Net, and VB6 set of applications used to do check imaging, banking and credit card processing activities, and FEC reporting.