Ian Monroe

Summary

Product engineer with 20+ years shipping web systems that people use daily, now focused on LLM-backed products: retrieval-augmented generation, agent workflows, and process automation. Built and launched an autonomous AI journalism platform that has published 10,000+ articles, and a paying SaaS product, both solo. Deep PHP, TypeScript, Next.js, Python, and cloud infrastructure. Comfortable turning a vague stakeholder problem into a shipped tool.

Selected Product & AI Work

News-Mash — autonomous AI journalism platform

2023 — Present

Built, launched, and still operating solo — 10,000+ articles published with no human in the loop. A Python service polls seven wire and national news feeds every 30 minutes, embeds each article, and applies recency-weighted hierarchical clustering to find cross-source clusters of two to five independent reports on the same event. GPT-5 synthesizes each cluster into an original article in a single structured-output call; a fact-grounding pass then verifies the draft against its source texts and rewrites or discards anything it can't support, and embedding similarity against the published corpus blocks near-duplicates. Posts ship via the WordPress REST API with generated headline, categories, source attribution, and bidirectional related-story links. Reasoning-model spend is confined to writing and fact checking; classification and fallbacks run on a cheaper model.

Fee-clear — bootstrapped SaaS, live and taking payments

2026 — Present

Junk-fee and drip-pricing risk screening: a free assessment scores a business's pricing and disclosure practices, and a paid tier generates a detailed PDF report. Next.js and TypeScript on Prisma/PostgreSQL, Stripe Checkout with webhook-driven fulfillment, React PDF generation, and Amazon SES delivery, deployed in Docker on self-managed CapRover infrastructure. Shipped end to end in a weekend; roadmap driven by competitive analysis.

RAG chatbot prototypes — retrieval over institutional content, at Stanford

Stanford Web Services

Working prototypes that answer questions over a university unit's own published content and documentation, rather than sending people to a search box: document ingestion and chunking, embedding and vector retrieval, and grounded generation wired to a chat interface. Paired with reusable AI automation frameworks for repetitive internal editorial and support work. First serious LLM work inside the group.

Technical Skills

AI & LLM

RAG pipelines, embeddings & vector search, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, prompt engineering, agent & workflow automation, spaCy/NLP

Languages

PHP, TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, SQL, Bash, HTML, CSS

Frameworks & Platforms

Next.js, React, Node.js, Vue.js, Laravel, Astro, Drupal, WordPress

Data & Payments

PostgreSQL, Prisma, MySQL, Stripe, REST APIs, Amazon SES

Infrastructure & DevOps

Docker, Linux, Nginx, AWS, CapRover, Acquia Cloud, Git/GitHub, GitHub Actions, CircleCI

Practice

PHPUnit, Codeception, Selenium, Agile/Jira, WCAG accessibility, analytics

Experience

Web Developer

Stanford Web Services, Stanford University

2020 — Present
  • Introduced retrieval-augmented generation to the group: built chatbot prototypes that answer questions over a unit's own site content and documentation, covering ingestion, chunking, embedding, vector retrieval, and grounded generation, plus reusable AI automation frameworks for repetitive editorial and support work
  • Technical lead on custom applications for the School of Engineering, Stanford University Libraries, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, working directly with non-technical stakeholders to turn ambiguous requirements into shipped tools
  • Built decoupled architectures pairing Drupal and Next.js/TypeScript front ends, including ERSO, an event-registration and space-reservation application for student organizations
  • Architected enterprise Drupal platforms delivering WCAG-compliant sites for schools, departments, and organizational units across the university, on Acquia Site Factory, Pro, and Cloud
  • Owned testing and release automation across the portfolio — PHPUnit, Codeception, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Robo, and Bash tooling

Owner

Monroe Digital LLC

2017 — Present
  • Solo product work: built, launched, and operate News-Mash and Fee-clear (above), plus a portfolio of smaller applications and open-source projects
  • Designed and shipped business process automations and RAG-backed conversational AI systems for private-sector clients
  • Ran the full stack of a one-person software business — discovery, architecture, build, deployment, monitoring, and customer acquisition
  • Worked across Python, TypeScript/Next.js, Laravel, Vue.js, WordPress, and a wide range of third-party APIs

Lead Developer — Consumer Engagement

LegalShield

2018 — 2019
  • Built and maintained consumer-facing web properties across US, UK, and Canadian markets using PHP7, Drupal 7/8, Node.js, Yarn, and Gulp
  • Established development and deployment workflows leveraging Acquia, Docker, and PHPUnit/Selenium testing
  • Led website launches, CMS replatforming initiatives, and redesigns aligned with evolving business requirements
  • Enhanced analytics and tracking across direct-to-consumer and network sales funnels, contributing to a 50% increase in direct-to-consumer sales within eight months
  • Collaborated in distributed Agile teams across US, UK, and South America

Senior Web Developer

Veritas Health, LLC

2016 — 2018
  • Developed Drupal 7.x solutions for high-traffic, advertising-driven health websites including spine-health.com and arthritis-health.com, serving tens of millions of monthly pageviews
  • Collaborated within Agile development teams using Git, virtualized LEMP/CentOS environments, and Jira
  • Delivered UI enhancements, content management functionality, and supported large-scale redesigns and new site launches

Earlier

ABA Journal · Leslie Hindman Auctioneers · Orlando Weekly

2001 — 2016
  • Web Producer, ABA Journal (2010–2016) — led a full refactor and redesign of abajournal.com that increased capacity 100x while cutting infrastructure costs 50%. Azbee Gold National Award for Online Excellence (2014), Webby Award nomination for Law Websites (2015), Azbee Bronze National Award for Web Site Redesign (2015).
  • IT Specialist, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers (2010) — ran all technical operations and web development for the Midwest's premier fine art auction house.
  • Web Editor / IT Manager, Orlando Weekly (2001–2008) — owned all digital content and infrastructure in a top-twenty media market; built ad and database systems behind 800% online revenue growth over three years. Eppy Award nominations for best weekly-newspaper-affiliated web site (2006, 2007).

Education

M.S. Journalism

Northwestern University — Medill School of Journalism

2009

Specialization in interactive storytelling. Training included beat reporting, health and science reporting, arts reporting, data journalism, and multimedia production.

B.S. Liberal Studies

University of Central Florida

2001

Liberal Studies degree with a minor in Computer Information Technology and a specialization in art.