trentvb.com

Trent Van Bemmel

Senior Application Developer • Interstates

I am a software engineer with over 18 years of continuous experience building dependable, full-lifecycle enterprise systems. Currently, I work on the AI Delivery Team at Interstates, researching and building information platforms using RAG strategies, with a dedicated focus on document conversion, structural fidelity, and file-based knowledge stores (such as OKF).

My technical foundation centers on Go (Golang), NodeJS, TypeScript, and SQLite WASM—building compiled, stable services that avoid dependency churn and withstand the test of time. That engineering discipline is paired with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, giving me a deep appreciation for language, syntax, and document hierarchy.

trentvb@gmail.com LinkedIn ↗ Northwest Iowa

Approach & AI Delivery

Document Conversion & File-Based RAG

In enterprise engineering, internal standards documents require rigorous precision. Naive conversion pipelines risk formatting drift, dropped sections, and corrupted text. My work on the AI Delivery Team centers on multi-stage format transformations (DOCX → PDF → Markdown) that ensure source text stays true and structurally intact:

01
Standards Conversion Pipelines (DOCX → PDF → Markdown): Engineering reliable multi-stage conversion workflows specifically tailored for enterprise standards documents, translating rich word processing files through PDF rendering into clean, structured Markdown.
02
Textual & Structural Fidelity: Ensuring text stays completely true and verbatim across conversions—preserving exact phrasing, technical clauses, heading hierarchies, and list numbering without loss, corruption, or drift.
03
File-Based Knowledge Repositories (OKF): Organizing documents into transparent, version-controlled Markdown files with standardized YAML frontmatter metadata, keeping the knowledge layer deterministic, auditable, and lightweight.
04
Selective Context Packaging: Navigating document hierarchy to extract precise, coherent sections with parent breadcrumbs rather than sending noisy token fragments to model prompts.
05
Grounding & Local Benchmarks: Anchoring model responses directly to source document citations, while benchmarking prompt performance against local models (Ollama, llama.cpp) on an on-premise home server.

Selected Systems

Architectural Milestones

WebSQL to SQLite WASM Migration

Zero-Downtime Client DB

Maintained a major enterprise application organizing electrical construction data. When browsers deprecated WebSQL, re-architected client-side storage to SQLite compiled to WebAssembly (WASM), preserving offline execution and query performance with zero user disruption.

SQLite WASM • C# .NET • MSSQL • Performance Tuning

Transitioning Team Applications to Go

Stack Modernization

Guided the transition from JavaScript-heavy web applications to compiled Go binaries. This eliminated volatile npm dependency churn, patched recurring security vulnerabilities (CVEs), and produced lightweight, self-contained services that operate with near-zero maintenance.

Go (Golang) • Single-Binary Microservices • Security & Reliability

10-Year Lifecycle: Enterprise Work Planning App

Full-Lifecycle Ownership

Part of a small team that designed, developed, and maintained a mission-critical Work Planning application through its complete 10+ year lifespan—from initial development to active maintenance and replacement planning. Still actively running in production today.

AngularJS • C# .NET API • MSSQL • Microsoft Graph API

Enterprise Integration Hubs & Graph API Pipelines

Polyglot Integrations

Engineered numerous pipelines syncing data between distributed applications, Microsoft Graph API, and planning software hubs using Go, TypeScript/Node.js, Python, and C#.

Go • C# • TypeScript • Python • REST APIs

Career

Work History at Interstates

Senior Application Developer • AI Delivery Team

2024 — Present
  • Researching and developing information platforms using RAG strategies, specializing in standards document conversion fidelity (DOCX → PDF → Markdown) and file-based knowledge stores (OKF).
  • Promoted to Senior Application Developer by staying current with technology trends and educating peers.
  • Tasked with training new developers and teaching whole-system architecture thinking rather than viewing problems as narrow code slices.

Application Developer • Full Lifecycle Systems

2012 — 2024
  • Built and maintained the Work Planning application across a decade-long software lifecycle.
  • Migrated client-side electrical construction data app from deprecated WebSQL to SQLite WASM with zero downtime.
  • Helped modernize team development practices toward Go to minimize dependency bloat and eliminate vulnerabilities.
  • Built polyglot software integrations interfacing with Microsoft Graph API and central planning hubs.

Help Desk Supervisor & Application Developer

2010 — 2012
  • Held dual responsibility for help desk leadership and internal application development.
  • Facilitated the foundational change from Microsoft Access desktop tools to modern web development with PHP and ASP.NET.

Help Desk Technician → Supervisor

2008 — 2010
  • Promoted to supervisor within two years by demonstrating technical initiative and operational reliability.

Exploration

Dedicated Home AI Server

In my free time, I maintain a dedicated on-premise AI server to explore AI-assisted development. I run and benchmark local open-weights models using Ollama and llama.cpp to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses on code generation and document understanding, and actively experiment with frontier models and agentic workflows including Gemini, Antigravity, Claude Code, and Pi coding agent.

Stack

Technical Tooling

Languages & Backend

Go (Golang), C# (.NET Core), TypeScript / Node.js, SQL, Python (conversion & scripting), PHP, Bash

Document & AI Systems

Document conversion (DOCX/PDF/Markdown), Text fidelity, File-Based RAG (OKF), Structured Markdown, Gemini, Antigravity, Claude Code, Ollama, llama.cpp

Data & WebAssembly

SQLite WASM (client-side), MSSQL, Microsoft Graph API, REST APIs, Git-backed knowledge stores

Engineering Practices

Whole-system architecture, 10-year lifecycles, zero-churn software, developer mentorship

Background

Education & Community

Bachelor of Arts in English Literature — Dordt University (2006)
Deep grounding in narrative discourse, linguistic ambiguity, and textual syntax.
Associate Degree in Computer Programming — Southeast Technical Institute (2003)
Foundational software development, relational databases, and systems fundamentals.

I've lived in Rock Valley and Hull, Iowa since 2008 with my wife Michelle and our six children. Active member of Calvary Protestant Reformed Church and served on the school boards for Hull Protestant Reformed School and Trinity High School.