Kanstex wordmark
Entity Kanstex, Inc. · S-Corp
Established April 2011
Principal Chris Alderson
Location Cedar Park, TX
Index v.2026.01

Architecture, code,
and the infrastructure underneath.

§ 00  —  Prospectus

An S-corporation for deep, long-horizon software work.

Kanstex is the consulting entity of Chris Alderson — a senior full-stack engineer and fractional CTO with twenty-five-plus years architecting enterprise systems, and a continuous record of AWS infrastructure work stretching back to 2008.

The work spans Java and J2EE platforms, Ruby on Rails applications, .NET systems, and the cloud infrastructure that holds them all up — delivered for Fortune 500 clients, venture-backed startups, and specialized industry software alike.

§ 01  —  Principal

Two decades of building production systems that hold up.

Chris Alderson — full-stack engineer, architect, fractional CTO.

Chris has spent his career at the architectural seam between application and infrastructure: designing systems from the database up, writing the code that ships, and running the servers that keep it alive. He's led teams from two to twenty, managed offshore developers across continents, and personally deployed applications on AWS since the service was still in its infancy in 2008.

He operates Kanstex as his independent consulting vehicle — the entity through which he takes on selective engineering, architecture, and technical-leadership engagements for clients who need both senior judgment and hands-on delivery, without the overhead of a larger firm.

The through-line across every engagement is a commitment to well-structured, pattern-driven code and established engineering practice — the kind that still reads cleanly five years in — paired with hands-on fluency in modern AI tooling like Claude and Claude Code, used judiciously to raise the quality bar rather than replace it.

Certifications & Education
  • Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (Java)
  • Sun Certified Business Component Developer
  • Sun Certified Web Component Developer
  • Sun Certified Developer (Java 2)
  • Sun Certified Programmer (Java)
  • IBM Certified Enterprise Connectivity, J2EE
  • IBM OOAD with UML
  • B.S. Environmental Studies, University of Kansas (1997)
Entity
Kanstex, Inc. — Texas S-Corporation
Established
April 2011
Principal
Chris Alderson
Based
Cedar Park, Texas
Engagements
CTO, architecture, senior engineering, code review, team leadership
Formats
Fractional, contract, retained
Sectors
Enterprise SaaS, healthtech, sportstech, consumer, non-profit, fintech-adjacent
25+
Years architecting production systems
17+
Years operating AWS infrastructure · since 2008
50+
Enterprise & startup engagements delivered
§ 02  —  Practice

What Kanstex is actually hired to do.

01 · ArchitectureCore

System architecture & modernization

Taking monoliths apart into services without breaking them. Rails upgrade paths. Java / J2EE platforms. Event-driven systems, ETL, data-sync services at scale. Codebases that were fast to build and are now hard to change.

Keywords  —  SOA · Rails 8 · J2EE · Strategy pattern · Namespacing · Bulk preloading · ElasticSearch
02 · CloudSince 2008

AWS infrastructure engineering

Production cloud work from the EC2 pre-launch era to Kamal 2 and Docker today. VPC design, cross-region PrivateLink, RDS/Aurora, reporting via Athena/S3, SES, Route 53, CI/CD, and the unglamorous runbook work that keeps things up at 3 a.m.

Keywords  —  EC2 · VPC · RDS · Aurora · S3 · SES · Route 53 · Athena · Kamal · Docker · Capistrano
03 · Full-StackRails · Java

Senior full-stack development

Ruby on Rails (6, 7, 8), Java / J2EE, and .NET systems built to production standards. HAML / Stimulus / ESBuild front-ends, REST and JSON APIs, background processing, OAuth and Devise auth, Shrine, payment and identity integrations.

Keywords  —  Rails · Spring · Struts · Stimulus · jsbundling · Devise · CanCanCan · Shrine · ElasticSearch
04 · LeadershipCTO · VP Eng

Fractional CTO & technical leadership

Acting as the technical head for early-stage companies. Hiring, code review, offshore team management across continents, roadmap, architecture decisions, vendor evaluation, and the conversations with founders about trade-offs that only a senior engineer can have honestly.

Keywords  —  Fractional CTO · Offshore team mgmt · Agile Scrum · Code review · Hiring · Due diligence
05 · Data & IntegrationETL · Sync

Data pipelines & system integrations

Large-scale data synchronization services, including one reduced from ~6 hours to ~30 minutes through bulk preloading, chunking, and audit-logged debug modes. Integrations with Facebook, Twitter, Brightcove, Salesforce, ExactTarget, Apple & Google OAuth, Geoapify.

Keywords  —  ETL · Data sync · JSON · SOAP · REST · OAuth2 · Webhooks · Audit logging
06 · Product0 → 1

Greenfield product engineering

From blank repo to live in front of users. Independently shipped apps including PelviZen (pelvic-health platform, Rails 8 on EC2 / Kamal) and VocabQuest (vocabulary app for children, Devise without email for child accounts, configurable challenge modes).

Keywords  —  Rails 8 · Kamal · Docker · Propshaft · Solid Queue · Stimulus · Tailwind · TestFlight
07 · CraftQuality

Well-structured code & lasting patterns

A quarter-century of engagements builds a strong conviction: the codebase three years from now has to be maintainable by someone else. Kanstex commits to well-established practices — SOLID principles, clear separation of concerns, idiomatic framework use, Strategy and Factory patterns applied with intent — and to the disciplined code review, refactoring, and documentation work that keeps systems honest.

Keywords  —  SOLID · Design patterns · Code review · Refactoring · Test coverage · Documentation · Linting
08 · ToolingAI-Assisted

AI-accelerated development

Hands-on experience setting up and working with modern AI coding tools — including Claude and Claude Code — as a genuine force multiplier on delivery velocity and code quality. Used with judgment: senior engineering stays firmly in control of architecture and correctness, while AI accelerates the boilerplate, refactoring, test generation, and research that used to consume days.

Keywords  —  Claude · Claude Code · AI-assisted review · Prompt engineering · Agent workflows · Accelerated delivery
§ 03  —  Selected Work

A partial catalog of engagements.

01
MyPelvizen
Chief Technology Officer  ·  Current
Women's health technology company building a pelvic-health platform for incontinence. Technical leadership, Rails 8 architecture, AWS infrastructure, SES email deliverability, marketplace feature with CanCanCan permissions and Shrine/S3 assets, and management of an offshore developer.
Ruby on Rails 8AWS EC2Kamal 2DockerPropshaftAmazon SESRoute 53
Active
2025 — Present
02
HaymakerSpace
Chief Technology Officer
CTO for a venture-backed startup building a Vue.js front-end on a Ruby on Rails API. Set the technical direction from the ground up, architected the system, hired and managed a pair of offshore developers, and handled the code review and release process.
Vue.jsRuby on RailsCapacitorJSOffshore team mgmtAWS
Startup
2021 — 2024
03
OrthoFi
Senior Developer
Development work on OrthoFi's orthodontics practice-management software, working in .NET/C# on the core billing and patient-facing systems used by orthodontic practices across the United States.
.NETC#SQL ServerEnterprise SaaS
Healthcare
2023 — 2024
04
TicketAdvantage
Developer
Engineering work on an online sports-betting platform. Application development, integration work, and production support in a regulated, real-money-transaction environment.
Web platformBetting marketsPayments
Fintech-adj.
05
National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC)
Architect & Lead Engineer
Architected and built the NABC's membership-management application and online member portal from scratch. Managed an offshore development team through implementation, stood up and maintained the AWS EC2 infrastructure, and consulted on the membership team's business processes.
Ruby on RailsAWS EC2MySQLOffshore team mgmtMember portal
Association
06
Maternity Media
Senior Developer
Feature development on the Belly Bunch web application — a social platform for expectant mothers — plus setup and ongoing maintenance of the AWS infrastructure that ran it.
Web appAWSSocial platformRuby on Rails
Consumer
07
Digital Sports Ventures
Development Manager & Senior Architect
Architected a high-throughput Java application server that backed nearly all of DSV's products; designed a code-generation layer that automatically produced DAO/BD code for PostgreSQL, Twitter, Facebook, Brightcove, and Salesforce; built an NCAA tournament bracket widget distributed to 300+ partner websites; and implemented a memcached caching strategy that dramatically increased system performance.
Java / J2EESpringPostgreSQLMemcachedFlexAWS EC2Ruby on Rails
Sports media
08
Kana Software (formerly eVergance)
Development Manager
Customized the Kana knowledge-management platform for Standard & Poor's, built custom JReports reporting for several enterprise customers, and managed a team of fifteen-plus developers across engagements for the U.S. Postal Service, TD Ameritrade, RIM, Macy's, Adobe, Ford, Verizon, Wachovia, and others.
Java / J2EESpringStruts2OracleWebSphereJReports
Enterprise
§ 03.1  —  Feature engagement

AWS since 2008. Before most teams had a word for it.

Kanstex has been architecting and operating Amazon Web Services deployments since the earliest days of EC2 — through every era from hand-rolled AMIs and stitched-together shell scripts, to Capistrano and Passenger, to Docker, to today's Kamal 2 and Aurora-backed production environments.

Not a vendor reseller; a practitioner who has personally set up the VPC, configured the DKIM, traced the Propshaft fingerprint mismatch, and done the 2 a.m. rollback.

EC2 · ECScompute
S3object store
RDS · Auroradatabases
VPC · PrivateLinknetworking
SESemail
Route 53DNS
Athenaanalytics
CloudWatchobservability
IAMaccess control
ACMcertificates
§ 04  —  Technology

The stack, assembled.

Languages11

  • Ruby
  • Java / J2EE
  • C#
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • SQL
  • Swift
  • HTML
  • XSL / XML
  • PowerBuilder
  • Flex

Frameworks12

  • Ruby on Rails (6, 7, 8)
  • Spring
  • Struts / Struts2
  • Vue.js
  • CapacitorJS
  • Stimulus
  • Hibernate
  • Devise
  • CanCanCan
  • Shrine
  • Sidekiq / Solid Queue
  • SwiftUI

Cloud & OpsAWS

  • AWS (since 2008)
  • EC2 · ECS
  • S3
  • RDS · Aurora MySQL
  • VPC · PrivateLink
  • Route 53 · SES
  • Athena
  • IAM · ACM
  • Docker
  • Kamal 2
  • Capistrano
  • Apache · Passenger

Databases6

  • MySQL · Aurora
  • PostgreSQL
  • Oracle
  • MS SQL Server
  • Sybase
  • DB2
  • ElasticSearch

IntegrationsPlatforms

  • Facebook · Twitter (X)
  • Apple Sign In · Google OAuth
  • Salesforce
  • ExactTarget
  • Brightcove · Kaltura
  • Geoapify
  • Stripe / Payments
  • Siebel · Oracle CRM
  • Clarify
  • WebMethods

MethodPractice

  • Agile Scrum
  • Code review & mentorship
  • Offshore team management
  • Joint application design
  • System architecture
  • Performance profiling
  • Due-diligence review
  • Technical hiring
§ 05  —  Contact

New engagements, selectively.

Kanstex takes on a limited number of engagements each year — usually in the shape of fractional CTO work, deep architecture or modernization engagements, or senior full-stack builds where the founder or CEO needs somebody they can trust to make the call.

If that sounds like the work you have, the most direct way to start the conversation is by email at calderson@kanstex.com. Expect a reply within one business day.

Email
calderson@kanstex.com
Telephone
+1  888 · 707 · 4994
Office
Cedar Park, Texas
Entity
Kanstex, Inc. · S-Corp