Matthew Mercado Full-stack engineer · AI agents & developer tools
Nine years of shipping web apps, AI agent tooling, and the hardware behind live experiences, for defense teams, escape rooms, and two SaaS products of my own. The proof is hidden in this room. Move your light across the wall to find it.Tap or hold the wall to aim your light.
- Escape Director: 7,900+ live games, at 99.95% uptime.
- Enterprise LLM platform: 3 of 4 MCP servers, running in production.
- Bulk data ingestion: Months → minutes, 100,000+ entities, no scripts.
- Legacy rewrite: −90% task time, shipped 3 months early.
- Escape This Frederick: 2× conversion, Lighthouse 52 → 97.
- Open-source Arduino SDK: Props talk to live games, C++, MIT licensed.
01 Case files
Built for the real world.
Products measured by what happens after launch: faster teams, steadier sessions, and better guest experiences.
02 About Matthew
From the first sketch to the final relay.
Nine years of full-stack engineering, from polished, accessible interfaces to the infrastructure and AI agents behind them. I build LLM tooling for defense teams by day, run two SaaS products of my own, and still wire up physical puzzles for live rooms.
- Shipping software
- 9 yrs
- SaaS products founded
- 2
- Summa cum laude
- B.S. CS
- Applied AI
- LLM agents · MCP servers · RAG · tool calling · LLM evaluation
- Full stack
- TypeScript · React · Next.js · SvelteKit · Node · FastAPI · PostgreSQL · Redis
- Delivery
- Docker · Kubernetes · Argo CD · CI/CD · Vitest · Playwright
- Hardware
- Arduino · Raspberry Pi · PLCs · C++ · sensors
03 Session log
Engineering across products, platforms, and teams.
Full resume- Apr 2026 — NowAI Agents Software EngineerU.S. Department of Defense
Built 3 of the 4 production MCP servers for an enterprise LLM platform, own code review across its 15 agent-tooling repositories, and shipped an air-gapped desktop IDE for AI coding agents.
- Jan 2025 — Apr 2026Technical LeadU.S. Department of Defense
Architected a self-service platform for bulk-loading 100,000+ entity datasets, replacing months of manual uploads and one-off scripts. Cut parsing from 7 minutes to under 1, turned dataset-wide edits that used to crash the app into sub-second updates, and made builds 6× faster with CI/CD and GitOps. Earned a division performance award.
- Aug 2024 — Jan 2025Software EngineerU.S. Department of Defense
Replaced a legacy system with a workflow application that cut analyst task time 90%. Delivered 3 months early, and four partner agencies requested it.
- Mar 2026 — NowFounder & Lead Software EngineerWaiver Director
Turning the Escape This waiver tool into a multi-tenant guest-CRM SaaS that captures every participant, with immutable audit trails, booking and email integrations, and Stripe billing.
- May 2023 — NowFounder & Lead Software EngineerEscape Director
Built and operate an escape-room SaaS with offline-first room operation, an LLM analytics assistant chosen through a 4-model evaluation harness, and an open-source Arduino SDK for physical props.
- Nov 2024 — NowContract Software EngineereMediCall
Delivered a React Native mobile app for medical messaging with Google sign-in, camera workflows, and push notifications.
- Jul 2017 — Aug 2024Software Engineer & ManagerEscape This Frederick
Redesigned the customer experience, doubled conversion, reduced bounce rate by 35%, and engineered Arduino and PLC puzzles that eliminated manual resets.
- May 2022 — Aug 2022Software Engineer Intern, Preview TeamBox
Built social-link unfurling for every file type, upgraded React and Redux analytics menus, and expanded automated QA with Cucumber and WebdriverIO.