Karey H. Powell
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I build production AI systems and scale fintech platforms. 14+ years architecting distributed systems across credit bureaus, lending, payments, and enterprise software.
14+ Years
Building production systems at scale
Staff-Level
Distributed systems architect
Team Builder
0 to 5+ engineering teams
AI in Production
Shipping AI-powered services
About Me
Engineering leader building and scaling production systems across fintech, data infrastructure, and enterprise platforms
What I Build
Currently Lead Solutions Architect at MZ Holdings, building AI-integrated fintech systems. I've co-founded a fintech SaaS that scaled to 75+ financial institutions and built credit bureau infrastructure handling large-scale data.
How I Work
I ship AI-powered services under real-world constraints — not just prototypes, but production systems with proper cost controls, observability, and latency budgets. Led enterprise platform delivery across the Caribbean.
With 14+ years of experience, I've architected distributed systems across credit bureaus, lending, payments, and enterprise software — leading teams, defining technical strategy, and delivering platforms that handle real production workloads.
Experience
A journey through innovation and excellence
Fintech platform building AI-integrated financial services and data processing systems.
- ▸Lead system architecture and design for a fintech platform — defining service boundaries, API contracts, data models, and integration patterns across payments, data processing, and third-party systems
- ▸Drive AI and machine learning integration into the platform — designing intelligent automation features that enhance financial data processing and decision-making workflows
- ▸Own technical solution design end-to-end: from stakeholder requirements through architecture proposals, implementation oversight, and production deployment in a cloud-native environment
Jamaica's leading credit bureau providing comprehensive credit information services.
- ▸Redesigned core microservices for Jamaica's credit bureau platform, cutting API response times by 50% and enabling the system to handle 3x peak query volume without degradation
- ▸Built and shipped RESTful APIs in Go, C#, and TypeScript that integrated with 30+ third-party data providers, improving integration onboarding time by 30%
- ▸Led data migration and reconciliation efforts for legacy credit systems, ensuring zero data loss across millions of consumer credit records
- ▸Drove system architecture decisions across the platform — established patterns for service decomposition, caching strategy, and security hardening that became team standards
Technology consultancy delivering cloud-based systems to SMB clients across logistics, retail, and professional services.
- ▸Defined and executed technical strategy for a consultancy delivering cloud-based systems to SMB clients across logistics, retail, and professional services
- ▸Architected and delivered an inventory management platform from scratch that increased client operational efficiency by 60%, processing 10K+ SKUs across multiple warehouses
- ▸Led technical discovery, solution architecture, and delivery for 15+ client engagements — scoping projects, managing timelines, and shipping production systems
- ▸Built and mentored a development team of 5 engineers, establishing code review processes, CI/CD pipelines, and architectural standards
FinTech SaaS platform for loan management serving financial institutions across the Caribbean.
- ▸Co-founded and architected a loan management SaaS platform from zero to serving 75+ financial institutions across multiple Caribbean markets
- ▸Designed and built the core platform: loan origination workflows, payment processing integrations, risk scoring, portfolio management, and regulatory reporting
- ▸Built and operated AWS infrastructure (ECS, Aurora, S3, SQS) supporting real-time transaction processing with 99.9% uptime across production environments
- ▸Created automation tooling for deployments, database migrations, and data reconciliation that reduced release cycles from weeks to hours
Enterprise architecture and API development for banking and payments platforms across Caribbean financial institutions.
- ▸Led enterprise architecture and API development for banking and payments platforms deployed across Caribbean financial institutions
- ▸Architected custom solutions for diverse business verticals including banking, e-commerce, healthcare, and government services
- ▸Managed technical recruiting, team development, and client consulting — grew the engineering function from founding to a productive delivery team
AI & Production Systems
Hands-on experience designing and shipping AI-enabled systems in production, not just prototypes
Architected and built an AI-powered voice call agent system using Vapi.ai, OpenAI GPT-4o, Deepgram STT, and Twilio — automated inbound call qualification with real-time lead routing, multi-brand configuration, and sub-90-second call resolution.
Built LLM-integrated microservices for automated document parsing, resume analysis, and structured data extraction — processing thousands of documents daily with sub-second latency.
Designed and deployed RAG pipelines combining vector search (pgvector, Pinecone) with relational data sources for context-aware AI responses in production applications.
Implemented real-time call scoring and classification systems using LLMs, enabling automated quality assurance across customer service operations.
Integrated AI services into Laravel, Node.js, and Python production systems with proper cost controls, fallback handling, observability, and latency budgets.
Technical Expertise
Comprehensive skill set across the full technology stack
Get In Touch
Interested in collaborating or discussing opportunities? I'd love to hear from you.
Based in Kingston, Jamaica. Open to remote roles globally and strategic consulting engagements. Especially interested in fintech infrastructure, AI-powered financial services, and production AI systems.