Joe Hurdle

About Joe Hurdle

I am, and will always be, an engineer driven by the work itself: building high-performance data and analytics systems, solving hard problems, and learning alongside great engineers. As a Principal Engineer, I prioritize technical depth and direct, hands-on problem-solving.My approach to systems design was forged through years of building and maintaining high-throughput services at massive scale. This foundation provided deep expertise in C++ and distributed computing environments, experience that continues to inform my work today.I bring a pragmatic philosophy to system architecture that balances performance with practicality. While I leverage Ruby on Rails for rapid development and developer efficiency, I appreciate the performance and control that C++ and Rust offer for demanding workloads. I actively maintain this technical depth, spending evenings advancing my knowledge of systems languages.My focus is proactive system design: shaping architectural vision to prevent issues before they become crises. I commit only to mission-driven work that offers the chance to contribute something meaningful, finding deep satisfaction in applying my hands-on expertise to advise executive leaders on critical technical challenges and mentor engineers through complex diagnoses and solutions.

Experience

1. Principal Engineer

   Apptegy

   Jul 2025 — Present · Little Rock, AR, US

   As a Principal Engineer and System Architect, I ensure the scalability, stability, and long-term technical health of our high-volume SaaS platform through deep IC technical work and proactive system design that prevents issues before they escalate.Key Contributions:AI/LLM IntegrationServed as Staff Engineer on the AppteGPT team, architecting and developing our AI-powered chatbot that delivers contextually rich answers from Apptegy\'s data ecosystem.Observability & Operational ExcellenceFounded the Architecture Group and established minimum observability standards across our platform, creating the foundation for scalable operations and improved system reliability.Architectural Standards & GovernanceDeveloped RFC processes and software lifecycle frameworks that standardize technical decision-making and enable more predictable, reliable software delivery.

Education

• Arkansas Tech University

  BS, Computer Science

  1993 — 1998

Skills

• Windows
• Bash
• Eclipse
• Rest
• Html5
• Google Protobuf
• Sinatra
• Unity3d
• Visual Basic
• Data Warehousing
• Subversion
• Shell Scripting
• Distributed Systems
• Stl
• Java Enterprise Edition
• C++
• Ruby on Rails
• Ogre
• Agile Methodologies
• Boost
• Javascript
• Tomcat
• Googletest
• Jquery
• Web Applications
• Git
• Gosu 2d
• Jboss Application Server
• Unix Shell Scripting
• Ant
• Databases
• Leadership
• 0mq
• Software Development
• Corba
• Python
• Scrum
• Soap
• Bootstrap
• C#