Founder @ Savanto · Applied AI · 25+ yrs shipping product
25+ years of production software, most recently as CTO at Dovetail. Now founder of Savanto, an applied-AI engineering firm. My work runs through it.
Production-grade AI features, not demos: RAG and semantic search, LLM-powered workflows, and AI agents and MCP integrations, with the observability and cloud architecture underneath (AWS/GCP).
Technical strategy, architecture reviews, and hands-on leadership for teams that need a senior operator without a full-time hire. Two decades of it, most recently a CTO tenure at Dovetail.
Two decades of shipping across React/Next.js, Node, and cloud platforms, from payment SDKs used by thousands of developers to healthcare platforms that scaled from 5 engineers to 75.
Founder
An applied-AI engineering firm. We build AI systems for businesses and run them in production.
Answer systems over a company's content and systems of record, forecasting and generation, and AI features shipped inside existing products: fixed scope, milestones, one accountable party. The flagship product is Savanto Desk, an assistant that knows what a business knows and can act on the systems it runs, reachable as search, chat, recommendations, a REST API, or MCP agents.
Visit Savanto ↗Built end to end: multi-tenant AWS platform, retrieval, crawler, MCP gateway, and ops.
Founded the firm and built its flagship, Savanto Desk, end to end: multi-tenant AWS cloud with hybrid semantic search, LLM chat pipelines, autonomous crawler, and a remote MCP server (OAuth 2.1) so AI agents can use connected sites. Live in production across many tenants.
Led the InSite initiative tracking personnel in high-risk regions, modernizing a legacy front end with Vue.js while navigating strict compliance and security requirements.
Core team member building an oncology data platform from its first line of code: Node.js, NoSQL, and AWS infrastructure that supported the engineering team growing from 5 to 75+.
Led the creation of multi-language payment SDKs (Node, Python, PHP, .NET, Java) and the transition from legacy SOAP to a scalable REST API. Transformative for their developer ecosystem.
What distinguished Sean was his holistic understanding of digital product development. His approach to technical architecture actually expanded what our design teams could achieve.
Larry BaltutisPocket MadeWhat stands out about Sean is his practical approach to software engineering. He balances technical excellence with business needs.
Chad StanselAltaFiberSean was instrumental in our early success. He led the team in creating robust, well-documented solutions that were transformative for our developer ecosystem.
Jerry RobertsGlobal PaymentsClients & employers over the years
An AI system that needs to actually ship, a team that needs senior engineering leadership, or a question about Savanto. I read every message.
sean.desmond@gmail.com