Available for senior & staff engineering roles

Eric Kikunda

Senior Software Engineer with 18+ years building distributed systems that scale. From embedded C to enterprise payments at Zoom, and now AI-powered automation — I architect backend systems that perform in production.

Java / Spring Boot Microservices RAG / LLMs AWS · Kafka · K8s Payment Systems
18+
Years of Experience
4
Companies & Domains
$B
Payments Systems Scale
30+
Technologies Shipped

The Full Picture

From embedded C to AI pipelines — a career built on systems that can't afford to fail.

My path in technology has been a steady climb from writing low-level embedded software in C to architecting distributed systems at scale — and now, integrating AI and machine learning into real-world enterprise workflows. Over 18 years, I've moved through roles that grew progressively more complex and impactful, each one building on the last.

I started at Precise Power, where I built machine-to-machine monitoring software for industrial UPS systems. That foundation — designing communication protocols, working at the hardware/software boundary — gave me a deep appreciation for reliability, because failure wasn't an option.

At BridgePay Network Solutions, I spent nearly a decade building a unified payment API that connected merchants to all major card processors through a single integration. That's where I developed deep expertise in Enterprise Integration Patterns and complex third-party systems.

Zoom brought me into large-scale consumer and enterprise SaaS — I joined the Billing and Payments team and grew into a Lead Engineer role, building global payment integrations (SEPA, iDEAL, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH) for tens of millions of users.

Today, at Just Appraised, I'm working at the intersection of backend engineering and AI — building RAG systems with LangChain and LlamaIndex, optimizing vector search infrastructure with Pinecone and Weaviate, and orchestrating ML pipelines on AWS for real government clients.

Systems Thinker

Whether it's an embedded protocol or a distributed Kafka topology, I design for reliability, observability, and scale from the start — not as an afterthought.

Engineering Leader

At Zoom, I transitioned from IC to Lead — owning not just code, but roadmap alignment, team velocity, and technical decision-making across the billing domain.

AI in Production

I'm not following AI trends — I'm shipping RAG pipelines in production, for real clients, with reliability requirements. Vector search, LLM orchestration, and enterprise-grade data pipelines.

Payments Domain Expert

8+ years across payment processing: ACH, SEPA, iDEAL, Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card fraud mitigation. I understand gateways, processors, and the business logic of financial systems.

Where I've Built

A career spanning embedded systems, fintech, global SaaS, and AI — each role deeper than the last.

Sr. Software Engineer
Just Appraised, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
Jun 2025 — Present

Building AI-driven government workflow automation platforms. Designing and maintaining production RAG systems that process and intelligently query government documents — with real reliability requirements for real clients.

  • Implemented RAG solutions using LangChain and LlamaIndex for intelligent document search and contextual Q&A
  • Built and optimized vector search infrastructure using Pinecone and Weaviate to improve retrieval accuracy
  • Designed distributed microservices to orchestrate AI/ML pipeline jobs and document processing workflows
  • Integrated Python ML models for automated data extraction, classification, and government form processing
  • Deployed containerized ML pipelines in AWS ensuring scalability, resilience, and high availability
Java Spring Boot Python LangChain LlamaIndex Pinecone Weaviate AWS DynamoDB Docker Kubernetes
Sr. Software Engineer → Lead Software Engineer
Zoom Video Communications
San Jose, CA
Feb 2021 — Mar 2025

Joined Zoom's Billing & Payments Engineering group and grew into a Lead Engineer role, taking ownership of global payment method integrations and the underlying billing infrastructure serving tens of millions of users worldwide.

  • Designed and implemented microservices architecture for highly scalable payment processing using Spring Cloud
  • Built integrations for ACH, SEPA, iDEAL, Google Pay, and Apple Pay into Zoom's global payment ecosystem
  • Collaborated with Data Science to implement real-time fraud detection in latency-sensitive payment paths
  • Built event-driven transaction processing pipelines using Apache Kafka for asynchronous distributed communication
  • Mentored engineers, drove code reviews, and led sprint planning aligned with product and business objectives
Java Spring Boot Spring Cloud Kafka AWS DynamoDB EC2 S3 Docker Kubernetes OAuth2
Sr. Software Engineer
BridgePay Network Solutions
Orlando, FL (Remote)
Feb 2017 — Feb 2021

Built the core payment processing platform — a unified API connecting merchants to every major card processor through a single integration. Developed the systems financial businesses depended on daily.

  • Integrated multiple payment processors: FirstData, TSYS, Cybersource, MasterCard MNGS, and Fiserv
  • Developed Enterprise Integration Patterns using Apache Camel and ActiveMQ for transaction routing
  • Implemented secure RESTful and SOAP-based services using Java EE, JAX-RS, and JAX-WS
  • Built asynchronous messaging solutions for reliable, high-volume payment transaction processing
Java EE JAX-RS JAX-WS Apache Camel ActiveMQ Hibernate JPA REST SOAP
Software Engineer
Precise Power (GenesysM2M)
Belmont, NC
Jan 2008 — Sep 2017

The foundation. Built M2M monitoring software for industrial UPS and battery systems — both the embedded firmware in C and the full backend application layer. Uptime was critical; failures had real physical consequences.

  • Designed distributed multi-tier M2M applications for real-time remote monitoring of industrial equipment
  • Developed embedded software components and communication protocols in C for monitoring devices
  • Built RESTful APIs and asynchronous messaging with RabbitMQ for real-time telemetry processing
  • Designed monitoring dashboards using JSF PrimeFaces, jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3
Java EE Spring Boot C RabbitMQ MongoDB Hibernate EJB JSF JUnit

Technical Toolkit

Built through production use — not certifications.

Java Ecosystem
Java SE 8/11/17 Spring Boot Spring Cloud Spring Data Spring Framework Hibernate / JPA JAX-RS / JAX-WS EJB / Servlets
🤖
AI / Machine Learning
RAG Architectures LangChain LlamaIndex LangGraph Pinecone Weaviate Vector Search LLM Integration
☁️
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS EC2 S3 DynamoDB Docker Kubernetes CI/CD Cloud-Native
Messaging & Streaming
Apache Kafka RabbitMQ ActiveMQ Apache Camel Event-Driven Architecture Enterprise Integration Patterns
💳
Payments & Fintech
ACH SEPA iDEAL Apple Pay Google Pay Fraud Detection Payment Gateways OAuth2 / JWT
🗄️
Databases
DynamoDB MongoDB SQL Pinecone Weaviate Spring Data
🌐
Languages & APIs
Java Python C TypeScript SQL RESTful APIs SOAP GraphQL
👥
Leadership & Process
Engineering Leadership Agile / Scrum Technical Mentoring Code Reviews System Design Cross-functional Collaboration

Academic Foundation

A software engineering degree that preceded the Spring era — paired with 18 years of production learning.

🎓
B.S. Software & Information Systems
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
2006 – 2010
📚
A.A.S. Information Systems
Central Piedmont Community College
2003 – 2005

Let's Connect

Open to senior & staff engineering roles, technical leadership positions, and consulting conversations around distributed systems or AI integration.