James Kokonas
AI Engineer · Designer and developer
Summary
Engineer and designer who builds production AI systems, commerce platforms and websites end to end. AI Engineer at Bowery Valuation, partner at Da Baers running its fulfillment platform, and formerly Director of AI at The Gettys Group and co-founder and COO of Kodex.
Experience
Bowery Valuation
AI EngineerJan 2026 – Present
- Build LLM document-extraction pipelines, evaluation harnesses and reconciliation agents for AI-native commercial real estate appraisal.
- Built an agent that computes Marshall & Swift replacement costs, with its parser service on AWS Lambda and an admin interface.
Da Baers LLC
PartnerOct 2025 – Present
- Built and run ReFLX, the dropship platform behind the company's Amazon business: orders route to national distributors over EDI (850/855/856/810) and SFTP, and tracking returns to Amazon automatically.
- Since September 2026 ReFLX has been the only fulfillment path for about 700 Amazon listings.
- Built the repricer, inventory guards and the Stripe storefront at dabaers.io on Next.js, Postgres and Railway.
The Gettys Group2024 – 2026
Director, AISep 2025 – Feb 2026
- Led AI for a hospitality design firm and built its internal tools: brand-standard compliance checking, FF&E procurement with bidding and AI invoice parsing, a 3D FF&E library, and multi-agent research on competing hotels.
- Presented the tools to executives at a global hotel brand.
Creative Technologies ManagerDec 2024 – Sep 2025
- Built generative AI design tools for the interior design team: ControlNet style transfer that keeps a room's real layout, in-place editing with inpainting, custom-trained LoRAs for approved furniture, and image-to-video.
Kodex Solutions
Co-founder and Chief Operating OfficerSep 2021 – Mar 2025
- Co-founded Kodex, a marketplace for ENS (Ethereum Name Service) domains.
- Led all fundraising, closing a $2M seed round at a $12M valuation.
Bulley & Andrews
VDC EngineerFeb 2021 – Sep 2021
- Virtual design and construction for commercial building projects.
Grapefruit Trading
TraderMay 2018 – May 2019
Helm Investing
Founder, Managing MemberSep 2017 – Jun 2018
The Gettys Group
VR DevelopmentJun 2017 – Sep 2017
Northworks Architects and Planners
VR Research and DevelopmentJun 2017 – Aug 2017
- Developed a way to bring conceptual models into virtual reality, so clients could walk through their homes before they were built.
- Built real-time Unreal Engine models of projects such as Ravinia Brewing's taproom.
Selected projects
- Brick Design Studio · Describe a model and an AI agent builds it in 3D from real LEGO parts. brickdesign.dev
- Smart Home System · A wall-mounted home hub run by a realtime voice agent.
- Lyceum · An AI tutor that writes your syllabus and lessons.
Skills
- AI
- LLM agents and tool use, Claude, OpenAI Realtime, Structured outputs, Evals, Document extraction, Computer vision
- Web
- TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node, WebGL and GLSL, Three.js, GSAP
- Data and infrastructure
- Postgres, SQLite, Prisma, Drizzle, Railway, AWS Lambda, Stripe, EDI and SFTP, Amazon SP-API
- 3D
- Point clouds, LiDAR, Drone capture, Light fields, 3D modeling, VR, Blender (Python), AutoCAD, CadQuery
- Python
- FastAPI, OpenCV, ffmpeg
Education
Swarthmore College · Computer Science2017