Lucian Badea
Enterprise IT Leader • AI Product Builder • Photographer
About Me
Enterprise Technology Leader. Grounded Product Builder.
I'm an enterprise IT leader and product builder focused on grounded decision-support systems.
I lead teams, modernize systems, and deliver reliable technology in higher education and public sector environments.
Alongside that work, I build products that turn complex, noisy, or stressful domains into clearer decisions.
From course materials and long-form media to nutrition, baby names, storm anxiety, and robotics analytics, my work focuses on helping people make better decisions with less friction, less noise, and more trust.
Across both sides of my work, I combine enterprise-scale thinking with hands-on product execution: reliable systems, pragmatic shipping, and a bias toward real usage over theory.
Today, my focus is expanding beyond building into distribution, positioning, and growth.
Photography
Gainesville Photographer
I am also a seasoned professional photographer serving the Gainesville area, with work across headshots, portraits, landscape, nature, and commercial photography.
- Languages
- English, Romanian, Spanish, French
- Hobbies
- Programming, Fitness, Photography, Soccer, Muay-Thai, Tennis, Mud-Runs
- Website
- https://lucianbadea.com
- Favorite Food
- Bacon
- Favorite Drink
- Bourbon
Resume
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 & AI Builder
- Built and shipped a portfolio of grounded decision-support products, including Lucidifier, TopicLens, GainzKeepr, NameStork, Elixirate, SkyeCalm, 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
01/2020 - Present
Director of Information Technology Services
Santa Fe College, Gainesville, FL
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.
07/2018 - 01/2020
Director of Technology
City of Gainesville, Gainesville, FL
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.
11/2011 - 07/2018
Associate Director, IT
Division of Student Affairs, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
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.
06/2004 - 11/2011
Software Developer - Lead
LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, Gainesville, FL
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.
08/2002 - 05/2004
Teaching / Research Assistant
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
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.
06/2000 - 07/2001
Database and Systems Administrator
British American Tobacco, Bucharest, Romania
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
05/2004
Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
06/2000
B.S. Computer Engineering
Politehnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Skills
AI & Decision Systems
- Core AI development: OpenAI API, AI-assisted development, Structured outputs, Prompt design
- Retrieval & grounding: Grounded AI, RAG workflows, Embeddings, Vector search, LLM reranking
- Trust & analytics: Citation workflows, Confidence signals, AI analytics
Cloud & 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 & Frameworks
- Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Java, C/C++
- Frontend: Vue.js, Astro, Vite, Vuetify, HTML, CSS, jQuery
- Mobile: React Native, Expo
- Backend & validation: Node.js, Hono, Zod, SlimPHP, Phalcon
- Legacy/native: MFC
Databases & 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 & Platforms
- Version control: Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, SVN
- API & database tools: DBeaver, Postman, SQL Developer, SQL*Plus, Toad, Enterprise Manager, Oracle Apex
- Hosting & servers: DigitalOcean, Linode, Apache, Nginx, Tomcat
- Infrastructure & reporting: Redis, Memcached, Tableau
Operating Systems
- Desktop & mobile: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
- Linux distributions: Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS
Projects
Decision-Support Products
Independent Product Builds
Independent products built around a common pattern: reduce friction, ground the answer in trustworthy data, and help people make better decisions in noisy or stressful domains.
AI Web App
Lucidifier
An AI study companion that answers from uploaded course materials with citations, confidence indicators, and academic-integrity boundaries.
- Grounds answers in course-specific materials instead of general chatbot memory.
- Includes citations, confidence signals, tenant administration, access controls, and ops tooling.
Search Platform
TopicLens
A search and discovery product for long-form spoken content, built around topic-first retrieval, timestamped evidence, and playable source citations.
- Combines transcript ingestion, chunking, embeddings, telemetry, and source metadata.
- Uses vector search, FTS/BM25, reciprocal-rank fusion, query expansion, and LLM reranking.
Mobile Nutrition App
GainzKeepr
A protein-first, habit-based nutrition tracker designed to support muscle retention, strength, and sustainable progress without obsessive tracking.
- Supports AI-assisted meal logging through photo, text, or voice input.
- Includes barcode scanning, saved meals, subscriptions, progress insights, and strength workflows.
Baby Name App
NameStork
A mobile and web product for couples and families to discover, compare, vote on, and decide on baby names together.
- Supports partner matching, swipe-style decisions, family voting, and shareable workflows.
- Uses SSA-derived name data, enrichment pipelines, structured metadata, and AI-guided name support.
AI Recipe App
Elixirate
A virtual bartender app for cocktail discovery, ingredient-aware exploration, and AI-generated recipe ideas.
- Uses a Cloudflare Worker and D1-backed cocktail dataset for recipes, ingredients, instructions, flavor profiles, and saved drinks.
- Ships as web and Expo mobile apps with app-store distribution, RevenueCat subscriptions, barcode scanning, and voice-search hooks.
Weather Support App
SkyeCalm
An emotional weather app for storm anxiety that combines official National Weather Service alert data with calm, plain-language support tools.
- Separates official safety signals from sensory intensity to reduce unnecessary alarm.
- Includes calm profiles, watch/warning education, push notifications, and support-copy guardrails.
Robotics Analytics
RoboStats
A VEX robotics competition companion for rankings, scouting, event planning, match prediction, team research, and competition-day decisions.
- Supports rankings, scouting lists, match prediction, calculators, timers, videos, and event reports.
- Uses TrueSkill-style ratings, derived metrics, event-strength logic, and RobotEvents data.
Enterprise Systems
Selected institutional and enterprise systems showing the other side of the same pattern: mission-critical platforms, integrations, reporting, migrations, and operational scale.
Enterprise Platform
Santa Fe ERP Ecosystem
Leadership of an in-house ERP ecosystem with tens of modules, 54 integrations, 200+ operational reports, data warehouse feeds, and college-wide application services.
ERP Transition
Workday Transition Support
Support for Santa Fe's transition from in-house ERP capabilities to Workday Financials, HCM, and Payroll, including related data and integration work.
Student Systems
Student Portal and College Application
Modernization and architecture review for student-facing and staff-facing systems supporting admissions, student services, workflows, and institutional operations.
Housing ERP
UF Housing Management System
ERP-scale housing platform replacing legacy processes with 90+ modules, 500+ web pages, and 100+ reports for Student Affairs operations.
Registration SaaS
Youth Conference Registration System
Revenue-generating SaaS product for youth conference registration, licensing, customization, client delivery, and operational workflows.
Regulated Systems
LifeSouth Blood Banking Systems
Regulated healthcare software and data platforms, including FDA-approved IBBIS modules, enterprise document imaging, and replication for 100+ mobile and fixed sites.
Contact
Let's Connect
[email protected]
Gainesville, Florida