Alvaro Galvan

Full-Stack AI Engineer

Full-stack AI engineer and creative technologist with a background in graphic design, indie publishing, and a decade building for creative industries. Specializes in LLM integration, prompt engineering, and agentic workflows, with two deployed AI applications and active independent contractor work.

Experience

  • Backend Developer - Independent Contractor

    StoryOrigin · Dec 2025 - Present

    • Build backend tooling for an author platform, filling gaps their team doesn't have the bandwidth to develop in-house.
    • For each tool: design the architecture, write a clear technical spec, and ship clean, well-tested code ready to fold into their product.
    • First deliverable: a PDF-to-EPUB converter in TypeScript (pdf.js, zip.js), fully unit tested with Vitest and delivered as production-ready JavaScript.

  • Freelance AI Engineer (Full-Stack)

    Independent · Oct 2024 - Present

    • Designed and shipped two full-stack AI-powered applications from scratch, owning every decision from architecture to deployment.
    • The Ravensfield Collection (ravensfieldcollection.com): a self-running AI museum generating original fiction and artwork daily via a multi-step Claude and Leonardo.AI pipeline.
    • Astroulette (astroulette.com): a synthwave chat roulette with AI-generated alien characters, WebSocket chat, magic link auth, and a Python/FastAPI backend.

  • Co-founder

    SiteArcade · Jan 2020 - Jun 2022

    • Co-founded a startup building automated websites for authors, working closely with the principal engineer on UI/UX design and implementation.
    • Grew the content blog to a top 5 author resource by organic traffic, managing a small team of independent writers.
    • First hands-on exposure to software engineering — the experience that sparked the eventual career shift.

  • Founder & Graphic Designer

    Striking Books · Jan 2018 - Dec 2019

    • Designed book covers for indie authors with a genre-specific approach focused on covers that actually sold books.
    • Built a relationship-driven practice. Many clients returned for entire series after collaborating on their first cover.

  • Lead Graphic Designer

    Troma Entertainment · Oct 2011 - Dec 2017

    • Designed movie posters, the original Troma Now streaming platform, and physical media for one of cult cinema's most beloved studios.
    • Learned early that good design is always a product decision and that knowing your audience makes all the difference.