Scot P. Floess
Senior Principal Software Engineer · Search Engineering · AI/ML · Distributed Systems
Louisburg, NC · Email · LinkedIn · GitHub · FlossWare · Solenopsis
Profile
Senior Principal Software Engineer and architect specializing in search, distributed systems, enterprise integration, AI/ML, and knowledge platforms. More than 35 years of software engineering experience, including nearly two decades at Red Hat, designing and delivering production systems across search, content pipelines, Salesforce integration, cloud infrastructure, and developer platforms. Architect of production Apache Solr search systems, with independent open-source work spanning AI orchestration, semantic retrieval, vector search, knowledge graphs, and model evaluation. Open-source architect and inventor with a U.S. patent in distributed computing.
Core Expertise
- Search & Information Retrieval: Apache Solr, Lucene, indexing, semantic retrieval, relevance-oriented systems
- AI/ML & LLM Systems: multi-model orchestration, consensus, adversarial evaluation, model routing, embeddings, vector search
- Distributed Systems: asynchronous pipelines, message-driven architectures, fault tolerance, scaling, service integration
- Architecture & Leadership: technical strategy, architecture, mentoring, code review, technical design, delivery ownership
- Enterprise Integration: Java, REST/SOAP, Salesforce, Oracle, BPEL, Apache Camel, XSLT
- Knowledge Platforms: document acquisition, semantic chunking, embeddings, vector databases, knowledge graphs
- DevOps & Delivery: GitOps, GitLab, Jenkins, CI/CD, Ansible, automated release engineering
- Observability: Sumo Logic, Splunk, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus
Independent Engineering & Open Source
FlossWare
Founder / Architect · GitHub · flossware.org
Designed and built an independent open-source AI and knowledge-engineering ecosystem spanning web acquisition, semantic processing, vector retrieval, knowledge graphs, distributed orchestration, and model evaluation.
- Designed and built a distributed LLM orchestration platform supporting multi-model consensus, adversarial review, intelligent model routing, and automated configuration optimization.
- Built a knowledge pipeline with 116+ automated scrapers across 15+ domains, PostgreSQL/pgvector semantic retrieval, HNSW indexing, OrientDB knowledge graphs, Redis queues, and distributed fleet execution.
- Applied Thompson Sampling for model selection and genetic algorithms for configuration evolution and optimization.
- Built asynchronous processing stages for acquisition, storage, chunking, embedding, semantic retrieval, and graph construction.
- Designed the platform around REST APIs and replaceable infrastructure implementations, keeping storage, queueing, vector, and graph technologies modular.
Red Hat Open Source
Solenopsis
Architect / Lead Developer
Started as an internal Red Hat Salesforce deployment and automation platform and subsequently released as open source with Red Hat’s approval. Designed to automate Salesforce metadata deployment, configuration, and release workflows.
Red Hat Libraries & Projects
Architect / Co-Architect
- commons, pipeline, command, and command-lang
- SFDeasy supporting Salesforce integration, including SOAP clients and fluent SOQL construction
- soap, session, and metadata
Professional Experience
Red Hat
Search Engineering
Senior Principal Software Engineer / Architect
April 2025 – Present
- Lead architecture and engineering for search-platform infrastructure, observability, content dissemination, and related engineering initiatives.
- Own the Disseminator content pipeline, now exceeding 312 production releases, delivering Red Hat knowledge content into Solr for search.
- Lead the Search Engineering migration from Splunk to Sumo Logic and establish GitOps-managed dashboards, alerts, and deployment workflows.
- Integrate engineering workflows with Claude Code, Ansible Tower, Jira, GitLab, GitHub, Sumo Logic, Grafana, Prometheus, Notion, and related development systems.
- Author and maintain open-source Java libraries used within Red Hat, including commons-java, soap, and session.
Principal Software Engineer / Architect
September 2016 – April 2025
- Architect and lead developer of Disseminator, an Apache Camel-based content dissemination pipeline indexing Red Hat errata, solutions, and articles into Solr for Customer Portal search.
- Managed 300+ production releases through automated Jenkins, SonarQube, and GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
- Led the migration of the organization’s Phoenix (PHX) data center infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS), using Amazon EC2, helping drive a major transition from on-premises data-center infrastructure to cloud-hosted infrastructure.
- Architected four open-source Java libraries under the Red Hat GitHub organization: pipeline, command, command-lang, and commons.
- Built and maintained production monitoring and alerting infrastructure using Splunk and New Relic.
- Served as system administrator and technical owner for search infrastructure, stability, and uptime.
Technical Lead / Principal Software Engineer, Strata
September 2015 – September 2016
- Led the technical direction of the Strata team and drove continuous-delivery adoption.
- Established development and operational practices that shortened the path from development to production.
Technical Lead / Senior Software Engineer, Strata
June 2013 – September 2015
- Led technical direction, code reviews, architecture, and cross-team coordination.
- Led the migration from JBoss EAP 4.3 to EAP 6.1.
Senior Software Engineer, Diagnostics
June 2012 – June 2013
- Architected high-volume Salesforce data acquisition and synchronization into Lucene indexes.
- Designed a reusable framework for polling and indexing data from third-party systems.
Technical Lead, Customer Case Manager
November 2010 – June 2012
- Architected Solenopsis, an internal Salesforce deployment platform subsequently released as open source with Red Hat’s approval.
- Architected and led development of Xylem, integrating SAP Solution Manager/Service Marketplace with Red Hat Salesforce systems.
- Automated development and production deployments using Solenopsis and Jenkins.
Product Owner, Customer Case Management
May 2011 – August 2011
- Served as interim product owner for the Customer Case Management team while continuing technical leadership responsibilities.
Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise Service Bus
July 2007 – October 2010
- Ported an Oracle BPEL enterprise service bus to a JBoss ESB architecture.
- Redesigned XSD/XSLT integrations and replaced the JDBC data-access layer with PL/SQL implementations against Oracle TCA.
Cisco
Application Architect / Principal Consultant · February 2007 – July 2007
- Produced high-level technical architecture and design documentation from business and functional requirements.
- Performed architecture reviews, code reviews, troubleshooting, and technology evaluations for enterprise Java applications.
IneoUSA
Senior Software Engineer · March 2004 – October 2005
- Architected and implemented core components of the Passwerks Security Suite using Java, Spring, dependency injection, design patterns, separation of concerns, and web services.
- Redesigned the development build environment and established associated engineering practices.
Datastream
Senior Software Engineer · April 2003 – March 2004
- Developed enterprise Java components and web services using EJB, JBoss, Oracle, and Java.
Lucent
Senior Software Engineer · February 2002 – November 2002
- Designed and developed Teleportal VoiceXML Gateway features and the supporting Java build/release infrastructure.
Bank of America
Senior Java Developer · December 2001 – February 2002
- Developed a distributed business-rules framework supporting reusable client/server business logic.
Fujitsu Network Communications
Senior Software Engineer / Team Lead, TL1 Management · September 1999 – June 2001
- Led Java/CORBA development, mentored engineers, performed architecture and code reviews, and designed shared client/server functionality.
HiddenMind Technologies
Senior Software Engineer · March 1997 – September 1999
- Researched and implemented high-performance distributed, n-tier Java architectures across Solaris, Linux, and Windows.
- Received U.S. Patent 6,442,565 for distributed computing technologies.
WiSE Medical Systems
Software Engineer · June 1994 – March 1997
- Architected and implemented C++ server and subsystem components with scalable, fault-tolerant, transactional architectures.
First Data Health Systems Group
Client/Server Engineer · July 1993 – June 1994
- Designed C++ client/server class hierarchies and database persistence layers for Sybase and Oracle.
AlliedSignal Automotive
Computer Programmer / Software Developer · May 1989 – June 1993
- Developed a reusable C++ class library covering persistence, containers, tasks, and messaging.
Technical Skills
Languages: Java, C++, Bash, SQL, PL/SQL, XSLT, MVEL, BeanShell
Search & Data: Apache Solr, Lucene, PostgreSQL, pgvector, OrientDB, Redis
AI/ML: LLM orchestration, embeddings, semantic retrieval, vector search, knowledge graphs, model evaluation, Bayesian bandits, genetic algorithms
Integration: Apache Camel, REST, SOAP, Salesforce, BPEL, JDBC, CORBA
Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS/EC2, OpenStack, KVM, Xen, Docker/containers, Ansible, Puppet, DD-WRT
Delivery: Git, GitLab, GitHub Actions/Runners, Jenkins, Maven, Ant, GitOps
Observability: Sumo Logic, Splunk, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus
Operating Systems: RHEL/Fedora, Debian, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD
Intellectual Property
U.S. Patent 6,442,565 — Distributed Computing Technologies
Google Patents
Education
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Computer Science · 1989 – 1993
State University of New York at Cobleskill
Associate of Science (A.S.), Computer Science · 1987 – 1989
Certifications & Professional Development
- Red Hat Certified Technician · Certificate 605010084735240
- Psychological Safety: Clear Blocks to Innovation, Collaboration, and Risk-Taking
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
- Prompt Engineering with Gemini · 2024
- Ethics in the Age of Generative AI