# Lucian Badea Enterprise IT Leader | AI Product Builder | Photographer Gainesville, Florida Email: info@lucianbadea.com Website: https://lucianbadea.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucianbadea ## Professional Summary Enterprise technology leader and hands-on product builder focused on grounded decision-support systems. Leads mission-critical higher education platforms at institutional scale while building AI-first products that help people make better decisions with less friction, less noise, and more trust. ## Career Highlights - Enterprise Leadership: Lead a 17-person application development organization supporting mission-critical systems for 1,500 staff and 16,000 students. - Operational Scale: Direct an in-house ERP ecosystem with tens of modules, 54 integrations, 200+ operational reports, and data warehouse feeds. - Modernization: Support major enterprise transitions including Workday Financials, HCM, Payroll, and financial aid migration to a third-party vendor. - AI Leadership: Co-chair Santa Fe College's AI Workgroup, helping guide institutional AI strategy, governance, adoption, and practical use. - AI Product Builder: Build grounded decision-support products across education, long-form media, nutrition, baby names, storm anxiety, and robotics analytics. - Technical Range: Bridge executive planning and hands-on architecture across databases, integrations, serverless platforms, APIs, and AI-assisted development. ## Product and AI Builder Profile - Built and shipped a portfolio of grounded decision-support products, including Lucidifier, TopicLens, GainzKeepr, NameStork, SkyeCalm, Elixirate, and RoboStats. - Apply AI patterns such as RAG workflows, embeddings/vector search, structured outputs, citation workflows, confidence signals, and LLM reranking. - Ship across Cloudflare Workers, Pages, D1, R2, KV, Vectorize, TypeScript, Hono, Vue/Astro, React Native, Expo, and SQLite-backed serverless architectures. ## Experience ### Director of Information Technology Services Santa Fe College, Gainesville, FL 01/2020 - Present Lead enterprise application development, integrations, reporting, and modernization for college-wide systems serving 1,500 staff and 16,000 students. - Lead a 17-person application development organization spanning business analysis/project management, development, database administration, reporting, and technical architecture. - Direct an in-house ERP ecosystem with tens of modules, including the Student Portal, College Application, Student Information System, staff applications, 200+ operational reports, and data warehouse ETL feeds. - Lead application development and architecture review across a Java Spring Boot, Angular/PrimeNG, and DB2 enterprise application stack. - Own integration strategy for 54 connections with third-party systems, state and federal agencies, banks, vendors, Clearinghouse, transcript exchanges, peer institutions, and institutional data platforms. - Support major enterprise transitions, including Workday Financials, HCM, Payroll, and financial aid migration from an in-house system to a third-party vendor platform. - Co-chair Santa Fe College's AI Workgroup, guiding cross-functional discussions around AI strategy, governance, adoption, and responsible implementation. - Reduce technical debt and delivery risk by modernizing Student Portal and College Application architecture, streamlining workflows, and standardizing review practices. - Bridge executive planning and hands-on technical leadership across database design, performance optimization, code reviews, mentorship, staffing, and vendor/resource planning. ### Director of Technology City of Gainesville, Gainesville, FL 07/2018 - 01/2020 Directed a city-wide technology portfolio across ERP, infrastructure, smart city, and business application support. - Translated civic technology priorities into delivery roadmaps, project timelines, resource plans, and cross-functional execution. - Led the city-wide Workday ERP rollout for HR, Finance, Risk Management, and Learning, including data migration, integrations, and stakeholder coordination. - Built and managed ERP, Smart City, and Business Application Support teams while shaping the city's technology roadmap. - Improved technology governance through IT policies, SLA practices, vendor contracts, strategic partnerships, and cloud software evaluations. - Recruited and developed staff while managing performance, training, and day-to-day technology operations. ### Associate Director, IT Division of Student Affairs, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 11/2011 - 07/2018 Managed cross-functional teams and major application modernization efforts for Student Affairs. - Led application modernization from a 20+ year-old legacy system into a roadmap-driven portfolio of Student Affairs applications. - Directed development of the Housing Management System, an ERP-scale platform replacing legacy processes with 90+ modules, 500+ web pages, and 100+ reports. - Owned the Youth Conference Registration System, a revenue-generating SaaS product, from licensing and customization through client delivery. - Modernized data workflows through AS/400-to-Oracle migration processes and improved operational reporting. - Provided technical direction across Oracle PL/SQL, SQL, Apex, SharePoint, and legacy DB2/AS400 systems. - Recruited and mentored staff, aligning team execution with divisional strategy and application delivery roadmaps. ### Software Developer - Lead LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, Gainesville, FL 06/2004 - 11/2011 Designed and developed core modules for regulated blood banking systems and enterprise data platforms. - Built regulated healthcare software in an FDA-approved blood banking environment, designing core IBBIS modules with Oracle, PL/SQL, MFC, C++, Java Tapestry, and PHP. - Architected Oracle and SQL Server database solutions, including replication for 100+ mobile and fixed sites using materialized views. - Delivered an enterprise document imaging solution using EMC Centera and developed Windows applications with MFC/C++. - Improved engineering consistency by establishing coding standards, training developers, and supporting QA and deployment processes. ### Teaching / Research Assistant University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 08/2002 - 05/2004 Supported teaching and database research in the Computer Science and Engineering program. - Taught Introduction to Java labs, designed coursework, and graded assignments for undergraduate computer science students. - Contributed to the SEEK project at the Database Center by developing a Java/Oracle query translator prototype. ### Database and Systems Administrator British American Tobacco, Bucharest, Romania 06/2000 - 07/2001 Administered enterprise databases and supported ERP/data warehousing work. - Administered Oracle 8/9i databases, supported data warehousing processes, and optimized enterprise query performance. - Earned the Best ERP Implementation award for synchronizing handheld devices with production databases. ## Education ### University of Florida, Gainesville, FL Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, 05/2004 ### Politehnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania B.S. Computer Engineering, 06/2000 ## Skills ### AI and Decision Systems - Core AI development: OpenAI API, AI-assisted development, Structured outputs, Prompt design - Retrieval and grounding: Grounded AI, RAG workflows, Embeddings, Vector search, LLM reranking - Trust and analytics: Citation workflows, Confidence signals, AI analytics ### Cloud and Serverless - Cloudflare ecosystem: Workers, Pages, D1, R2, KV, Queues, Vectorize, Cron Triggers - API architecture: REST APIs, JWT authentication, Microservices - DigitalOcean: Droplets, Managed Databases, Load Balancers, Functions, Object Storage - AWS ecosystem: Lambda, CloudFront, RDS, EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Alexa Skills ### Programming Languages and Frameworks - Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Java, C/C++ - Frontend: Vue.js, Astro, Vite, Vuetify, HTML, CSS, jQuery - Mobile: React Native, Expo - Backend and validation: Node.js, Hono, Zod, SlimPHP, Phalcon - Legacy/native: MFC ### Databases and Data - Current embedded/serverless: Cloudflare D1, SQLite - Enterprise relational: Oracle PL/SQL, SQL Server, DB2 - MySQL family: MySQL, MariaDB, Percona - Data architecture: Database design, Data modeling, Performance tuning, Query optimization, Replication - Cloud/other: Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL ### Tools and Platforms - Version control: Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, SVN - API and database tools: DBeaver, Postman, SQL Developer, SQL*Plus, Toad, Enterprise Manager, Oracle Apex - Hosting and servers: DigitalOcean, Linode, Apache, Nginx, Tomcat - Infrastructure and reporting: Redis, Memcached, Tableau ### Operating Systems - Desktop and mobile: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS - Linux distributions: Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS