Edgar Thornton

Available for Early & Mid-Stage Opportunities

Open to new opportunities and selective consulting engagements.

🚀 Founding Engineer / Early Engineering

🔧 Consulting (4-12 week builds)

📍 Remote or in Utah

Full-Time — Founding/Early Engineering

Looking to join an early-stage startup (pre-seed to Series B) as a founding engineer or early employee. I excel at 0→1 product building, establishing technical foundations, and shipping MVPs that turn into real businesses.

What I Bring

Full-stack development from scratch (Django, FastAPI, React, Next.js)
Data architecture and ETL pipelines for high-volume systems
AI integration using OpenAI, Anthropic, embeddings, and OCR
Proven ability to turn messy, unstructured data into automated systems
Experience in highly regulated industries (music royalties, government procurement)

Ideal Fit

Early-stage startups (pre-seed to Series B) or new teams within larger organizations in AI/ML, SaaS, fintech, or data-heavy industries where I can be one of the first engineers building from the ground up.

Consulting — 4-12 Week High-Impact Builds

Selective short-term consulting for MVP development, AI integration, or data architecture projects.

MVP Development & Launch

Build your entire product from architecture to deployment. Full-stack development with Django/FastAPI backends, React/Next.js frontends.

Example: Build a full SaaS platform with user auth, payments, and admin dashboard

AI Integration Projects

Add AI capabilities to existing products: embeddings-powered search, document processing with OCR, RAG systems, and intelligent automation.

Example: Build embeddings-powered document search with OpenAI + Postgres

Data Architecture & ETL

Design data pipelines, build analytics dashboards, optimize databases, and create reporting systems for high-volume data processing.

Example: Consolidate data from multiple sources into unified dashboards

Experience and Education

Hazel AI Technologies

Founding Engineer, YC Govtech Startup

Fifth employee at YC-backed AI firm specializing in government procurement.

Salt Lake City, UT • January 2025 - Present

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Built AI-driven tools to turn unstructured procurement data into actionable insights for governments.
Led data scraping project, enriching 5M+ vendors with descriptions, company info, contacts, and risk analysis.
Developed interactive dashboards for local governments to identify purchase order cost savings (Postgres, FastAPI, Next).
Developed AI-driven document and code search tools using OCR, embeddings, full-text search, and API models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.
Created risk analysis tools for procurement documents.

Technologies Used

FastAPI Next.js PostgreSQL OpenAI Anthropic Embeddings OCR AI/ML

Habitat Financial Technologies

Software Engineer & Technical Co-Founder, Music Tech SaaS Platform

Co-founded and scaled a SaaS platform revolutionizing royalty processing for the music industry. Processed $100M+ in royalties.

St. Louis, MO • September 2021 - December 2024

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Background: Habitat was spun out of Bonfire Records, an independent music company I co-founded in 2015 and grew to 200+ artists with 500M+ streams.

Designed and built end-to-end data architecture (Django, PostgreSQL) and integrated AI (OpenAI, Google) to automate royalty processing workflows.
Built interactive analytics dashboards using Python and Tableau, enabling stakeholders to monitor $100M+ in processed royalties with real-time insights.
Built predictive models using Python and SQL to forecast catalog valuations and optimize financial operations, directly improving decision-making for stakeholders and unlocking new revenue stream.
Grew customer base to 100+ independent labels and distributors through hands-on collaboration and continuous product iteration.

Notable Project: Jukehouse.fm

Music Publishing Platform — Joint venture with OneKindMedia. Built entire platform from scratch, currently managing 80,000+ songs.

Django REST Framework HTMX PostgreSQL Full-Stack

Technologies Used

Django PostgreSQL React Tableau AWS Docker AI Python

Seurat Group

Senior Data Analyst, Management Consulting & Private Equity Firm

Built data models and analytics solutions for Fortune 500 clients in ecommerce, retail, and pharma.

Norwalk, CT • July 2018 - September 2021

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Built Python and SQL models for Fortune 500 clients in ecommerce, retail, and pharma.
Led data-driven projects for customer retention and operational optimization.
Trained and mentored junior analysts on quantitative research methodologies.

Technologies Used

Python SQL Data Modeling Analytics Quantitative Research

Harvard University

B.A., Engineering, Harvard College

Studied engineering at Harvard College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Cambridge, MA • August 2014 - May 2018

Skills & Technologies

My superpower: turning messy, unstructured real-world domains into structured, automated systems. Every project involves taking complex, high-volume data (royalty statements, vendor databases, procurement documents) and building products people actually use.

Languages

Python

JavaScript

TypeScript

SQL

HTML

CSS

Backend Frameworks

Django

FastAPI

Flask

Django REST Framework

Frontend Frameworks

React

Next.js

HTMX

Databases & Data

PostgreSQL

SQL

ETL Pipelines

Data Architecture

Query Optimization

AI & Machine Learning

OpenAI API

Anthropic API

Embeddings

OCR

Document Processing

RAG Systems

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS

Docker

CI/CD

Scalable Architecture

Analytics & BI Tools

Tableau

Looker

Dashboard Design

Data Storytelling

Development Tools

Git

GitHub

Cursor

Claude Code

What I'm Learning

Scaling from early-stage, mid-stage and beyond

I'm optimized for early-stage: getting products to market fast, building with AI-native tools, and establishing technical foundations. I haven't scaled systems to millions of users yet — that's the challenge I'm looking for next.

Code & Projects

GitHub Profile This Site's Code

Note: Most of my code is in private repositories for clients and companies. I'm happy to discuss specific implementations and share details about my work.

What I'm Passionate About

🚀 Building Companies

Creating products that solve real problems and building teams that ship. I love the entire journey from idea to scaled business.

🧩 Solving Hard Problems

Complex technical challenges, especially around data architecture, AI integration, and system scalability. The harder, the better.

⛷️ Skiing

Utah's mountains are my playground. Nothing beats powder days and pushing limits on the slopes.

🎾 Tennis

Competitive tennis player. Love the mental game and continuous improvement that comes with the sport.

🎵 Music Industry

Deep fascination with how music tech is transforming the industry, from royalty processing to rights management.

🤖 AI & Innovation

Exploring how AI can enhance products and workflows. Always experimenting with the latest models and tools.