Gabe Fernandez
Principal Software Engineer · Full-Stack, Mobile & Applied AI
I take products from idea to production: AI voice agents, full-stack web platforms, and native iOS apps.
About
Building products that matter
I'm a product-minded engineer with 20+ years of experience building and running production software. Today I'm co-founder and CTO of Receptiva, a bilingual AI phone receptionist for law firms, and I lead engineering on contract for an orthopedic second-opinion medical platform.
Before that I spent 13 years at USAA, most recently as tech lead and solution architect for the Join USAA eligibility platform. I run an AI-native engineering practice built on agentic coding tools, evals, and human-reviewed automation, and I'm named inventor on 70 granted U.S. patents.
Portfolio
Featured Projects
Real projects with real outcomes. From AI voice agents to full-stack web platforms and native iOS apps.
Receptiva
Co-Founder & CTO
Bilingual AI phone receptionist for personal-injury law firms. Answers, triages, and routes every inbound call in English and Spanish.
- Real-time voice agent with a swappable model layer and warm transfer to attorneys over SIP
- Eval service that regression-tests call behavior before each deploy
- Self-serve onboarding that provisions phone numbers, plus Stripe subscriptions
- Public REST API and MCP server with OAuth 2.1 so firms can use Receptiva from Claude and ChatGPT
Orthopedic Second-Opinion Platform
Lead Software Engineer (Contract)
Medical platform that gives professional athletes orthopedic second opinions, with medical imaging, physician reports, and payments.
- Resolved the critical bugs and deployment issues blocking launch
- Security and privacy release: closed privilege-escalation and record-takeover paths, locked down athlete records and images
- Infrastructure as code with Terraform: every change previewed as a plan on its pull request, then deployed automatically through CI/CD
BookMatcher
Founder & Full-Stack Engineer
AI-powered book recommendations and reading tracker, on iOS and the web.
- iOS app live on the App Store (SwiftUI, Swift 6 strict concurrency, Clean Architecture)
- AI recommendations from a reader's taste profile and favorite books
- Next.js web app with programmatic SEO and a TypeScript Hono API on Vercel
Recall Beacon
Founder & Lead Engineer
Product-safety recall alerts for families: food, medicine, products, and vehicles.
- Recalls aggregated from FDA, USDA, CPSC, and NHTSA in one feed
- Push alerts when products you care about are recalled
- Firebase Functions (Node/TypeScript) ingest pipeline
AOTL Septic Service
Lead Full-Stack Engineer
Field and back-office app for a septic service company, streamlining field operations, customer management, and service report generation.
- Automated service report generation
- Customer search and management
- Back-office management and reporting
Other Work
Experience
Work History
A track record of delivering impactful software at scale.
Co-Founder & CTO
- Co-founded and built a bilingual (English/Spanish) AI phone receptionist for personal-injury law firms; live in production since June 2026, answering, triaging, and routing inbound calls
- Built the real-time voice agent in Python with a swappable model layer, so each firm runs on the voice model that fits its calls; warm transfer to attorneys over SIP; and an eval service that regression-tests call behavior before each deploy
- Built the Next.js / TypeScript platform: self-serve setup that provisions phone numbers, firm dashboard, Stripe subscriptions, and a durable post-call pipeline that extracts structured leads into Postgres
- Designed a public REST API and MCP server with OAuth 2.1 + PKCE so firms can use Receptiva from Claude and ChatGPT; deny-all row-level security, cross-tenant isolation tests, and an append-only audit log
Lead Software Engineer (Contract)
- Own engineering for an AWS-hosted orthopedic second-opinion platform used by professional sports teams, handling athletes' medical imaging (DICOM), physician reports, and payments
- Resolved the critical bugs and deployment issues blocking launch; run the product roadmap with the founders
- Led a security and privacy release: closed privilege-escalation and record-takeover paths, blocked unauthenticated access to athlete records, and added server-side access checks on images
- Rebuilt delivery with Terraform plans previewed on every pull request, automated deploys, and a single image-upload pipeline with failure alerts
Founder & Principal Engineer
- BookMatcher: AI book recommendations and reading tracker. iOS app on the App Store (SwiftUI, Swift 6), Next.js web app with programmatic SEO, and a TypeScript Hono API on Vercel with Supabase and Inngest
- Recall Beacon: product-safety recall alerts aggregated from FDA, USDA, CPSC, and NHTSA. SwiftUI iOS app with RevenueCat subscriptions and Firebase Functions ingest and push notifications
- Built an agentic "software factory": scheduled Claude Code loops that triage Sentry alerts, pick up Linear issues, write a failing test first, and open draft PRs, all behind hooks and a written risk policy so a human reviews and merges
- Client work: field and back-office operations app for a septic service company that automates technician service reports
Lead Software Engineer
- Tech lead and solution architect for the Join USAA eligibility platform: React front end and Java / Spring Boot microservices handling 1M+ requests a day
- Led the rollout of SLOs and SRE practices across services, ran the 24/7 on-call rotation for critical systems, and set code-review standards for the team
- Program tech lead across teams; mentored junior engineers and interns
- Shipped full-stack features on usaa.com/join with React, Redux, Java, Spring, Kafka event pipelines, Cypress, and CI/CD
Senior Software Engineer
- Developed back-end APIs on modern infrastructure using OpenShift, Docker, JBoss, Spring, REST, CyberArk, JWT, GitLab CI/CD
- Worked with specialty testing teams on defect resolution, root cause analysis, addressing security and performance findings
- Collaborated with IT architecture and business teams to design complex technical solutions and influence requirements
- Served as Pulse Champ, provided mentorship and coaching to junior developers
Research Engineer (IT Security / Fraud)
- Led development of Adaptive DDoS Mitigation library for USAA iOS Mobile App (patent granted), coordinating with Akamai team
- Led Cybersecurity research team of FTEs and contractors; evaluated vendor ML technologies and conducted executive innovation briefs
- Developed driver license and selfie capture technology on iOS using Machine Learning Vision APIs
- Designed and executed Production Pilot of Behavioral Profiling technology on USAA.com infrastructure
- Evaluated Intel IPT for Member Desktop QuickLogon and Employee VPN Logon
Graduate Assistant, ELITE Graduate Program
- Developed web-based application for intake, registration, and tracking of graduate students within grant-funded program
- Coordinated Web 2.0 technologies, produced workshop videos, enhanced integrations between website and social media
- Managed IT and departmental web site, implemented e-mail marketing system, developed customized reporting and analytics
Web Design & IT Services
- Designed and developed web sites for small businesses including Albermarle-Texas.com and ElectricTanCC.com
- Unisys Technical Services Helpdesk Technician: provided IT troubleshooting and support for Government employees
President / CEO
- Founded internet marketing and e-commerce startup; created, developed, and maintained WatchKings.com
- Established supplier relationships, implemented PPC campaigns and SEO strategies achieving top five rankings
Education
Academic Background
Master of Science in Computer Science
University of Texas at San Antonio
Concentration: Cybersecurity
Deep Learning Approaches for Network Intrusion Detection
Laboratory for Cybersecurity Dynamics (LCD)
Bachelor of Science in Construction Science
Texas A&M University
Research
Patents & Publications
Intellectual property and academic contributions to the field.
70
Patents Granted
26
Patent Families
1,184
Citations
15
h-index
Featured Patents
Authentication for application downloads
US 12,432,202 (2025)
Distributed ledger for network security management
US 12,184,664 (2024)
Audio tokens for multi-factor authentication
US 12,170,660 (2024)
Authenticating mobile traffic
US 11,095,630 (2021)
Behavioral profiling method and system to authenticate a user
US 10,091,180 (2018)
Selective passive voice authentication
US 11,676,150 (2023)
Publications
Deep Learning Approaches for Network Intrusion Detection
M.S. Thesis, University of Texas at San Antonio (2019)
A Case Study on Using Deep Learning for Network Intrusion Detection
IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM) (2019)
Addressing the Vulnerabilities of Pass-Thoughts
SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing (DCS) (2016)
My Brain is My Passport. Verify Me.
IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) (2016)
Credentials
Professional Development
Continuous learning across AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity.
AI & Tools
Anthropic - Oct 2025
Machine Learning
Convolutional Neural Networks
Coursera (deeplearning.ai) - Dec 2017
Structuring Machine Learning Projects
Coursera (deeplearning.ai) - Oct 2017
Improving Deep Neural Networks
Coursera (deeplearning.ai) - Sep 2017
Neural Networks and Deep Learning
Coursera (deeplearning.ai) - Sep 2017
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity: Technology, Application and Policy
MIT CSAIL - Spring 2016
Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing
BlackHat - Aug 2014
Designing Secure Protocols and Intercepting Secure Communication
BlackHat - Aug 2013
Innovation
Innovator Certification
UT Austin IC2 Institute - Fall 2014
Expertise
Skills & Technologies
20+ years across applied AI, backend, web, and mobile development.
Applied AI
Core ExpertiseMobile
Core ExpertiseBackend
Core ExpertiseWeb
Core ExpertiseData & Cloud
DevOps & Quality
Contact
Let's Work Together
Have a project in mind? Let's discuss how I can help you build something great.
Get In Touch
I'm currently available for contract work and interesting projects. If you need help building production-quality apps, feel free to reach out.
gabe@gabecfernandez.com
GitHub
github.com/gabecfernandez
linkedin.com/in/gabecfernandez
Location
Clifton Park, NY (Remote)