Shawn McBurnie

Work

20+ years of software systems engineering, currently salaried as Lead Engineer at BI Worldwide and concentrated on agentic AI and applied evaluation. Co-founder of Veridi (Canadian cooperative in formation, invite-only beta). Founder of NetterTech. 3+ years of design-system continuity at Anaplan. 7 years at National Marrow Donor Program (now Be The Match). Applied AI is main current focus; more broadly, composable abstraction design, accessibility-first engineering, and cross-functional translation.

To assess analytical depth and technical writing before the role narrative below, two pieces serve as primary evidence: the Reliability Layer manifesto for the four-concern framing of the AI reliability category, and the Veridi methodology writeup for architecture, calibration tables, and adversarial coverage. The methodology writeup is the canonical technical record of what I built. For a shipped-system inventory, see prototyping.

Current roles

Co-founder, Veridi (January 2026 to present)

veridi.org. Architected a 7-agent verification pipeline with selective-Brier 0.0253 calibration on a 100-claim validation set (95 original validation claims plus 5 targeted extension claims, 2026-05-04) and 13 documented gaming countermeasures backed by a 31-claim adversarial test suite. Methodology corpus runs ~22,500 lines across 74 documents (verified against dev tree 2026-04-30); production service is in invite-only beta as of April 2026.

Veridi is an LLM-grounded fact-verification system that produces evidence-quality-graded verdicts with calibrated confidence and abstains when the evidence will not support a verdict. Architecture, engineering, and methodology across the Veridi / Pragma / Praxis methodology suite: three aligned frameworks covering what is true (Veridi fact-checking), what works toward a chosen outcome (Pragma policy evidence synthesis), and what you can do from where you stand (Praxis individual action synthesis).

The Veridi web app is in invite-only beta as of April 2026; Pragma and Praxis run inside it via dispatch and also ship as standalone Claude Code skills. Veridi runs on a two-tier model architecture (Claude Sonnet 5 workhorse with a higher-capability advisor tier; model IDs are config, not code) with seven system-level agents on FastAPI, Anthropic SDK, and SQLite. Methodology versions: Veridi v1.2, Pragma v1.6, Praxis v1.4 (all current as of May 2026). The Pragma + Praxis benchmark passes 93 of 95 combined claims under the current versions (focused regression, 2026-05-26; up from 87 of 95 at the v1.0 baseline, with the two residual partials root-caused and a refinement ticket open). Thirteen documented gaming countermeasures (Veridi) with a 31-claim adversarial test suite (target detection rate at least 85%). Four verification depth tiers with cost-proportional methodology loading and auto-escalation. 1,968-line product specification at v1.4 with cost model, failure-mode analysis, and a Brier calibration framework (selective Brier scoring tracks confidence against observed outcomes; see the methodology writeup for detail). User-facing app supports English and French; non-English source coverage is research-stage. Canadian cooperative in formation.

Founder, NetterTech (January 2026 to present)

nettertech.com. Five-plugin commercial WordPress event-management suite with 10,000+ automated tests, OWASP 2025 security posture, and WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility; first plugin (Events free core) published on WordPress.org with two production customers.

Commercial WordPress plugin suite gated by the same evaluation-and-governance discipline applied to Veridi.

Author, Claude Code skills (2025 to present)

Over 80 skills authored with declared test-contract patterns; two published as open source (MIT) at claude-a11y-skills; coverage spans multi-agent team design, orchestration, evaluation governance, and methodology synthesis.

Production-grade authoring at the Claude ecosystem layer. Verified 2026-07-03 against ~/.claude/skills/; see colophon for sourcing. Skill-level test-contracts function as living guardrails against output drift, gating behavior on inspection rather than assertion.

Lead Engineer, BI Worldwide (August 2023 to present)

Product engineering at employee-recognition platform scale; shipped an internal admin UI as a Module Federation micro-frontend.

Principal Software Engineer, Nettercap Productions DBA (March 2009 to present)

15+ years of independent technical product delivery for nonprofit, arts, educational, and small-business clients, alongside W-2 roles. The pattern now refined in Veridi and NetterTech: user-needs analysis, architecture, rigorous testing, end-to-end delivery, ongoing stewardship, and cross-functional translation across technical and non-technical audiences. Long-term clients include Celtic Junction Arts Center, Center for Irish Music, and The Hope Survey.

Earlier roles

Lead Frontend Engineer, Insight Global (contract to BI Worldwide) (May 2023 to August 2023)

Six-month contract converting to direct hire at three months. Accelerated accessibility and type-safety posture on a pre-existing React / TypeScript codebase under tight deadlines.

Consulting Senior Frontend Engineer, 4wrd Consulting (ButcherBox) (January 2023 to March 2023)

React Aria accessible (WCAG AA / AAA) typesafe component library, documentation, and integration. Edge-case work on vanilla-extract atomic styling; typed interface contracts.

Full-Stack Software Engineer, Anaplan (March 2019 to July 2022)

3+ years on Anaplan’s internal design system. Became frontend lead when the founding engineer moved on; sole continuous contributor across the rest of that span. Team composition rotated; I was the constant. Cross-functional adoption across product engineering and design.

The mental foundation for Veridi’s agent infrastructure and the Claude Code skills set was laid here: composable abstraction design, governance, cross-functional synthesis, and continuous adoption advocacy across four surfaces (C-suite advocacy, designer partnership, engineering execution, DevOps collaboration). Design systems die from non-adoption more often than from technical flaws.

Software Engineer, Nerdery (June 2015 to April 2019)

Accessibility-first engineer on high-profile client projects. WCAG AAA enhancements. UI architecture from wireframes through vanilla JavaScript and React. Server-side contributions in PHP and Ruby. Human-centered structure and interface design within complex codebases as a career constant.

Earlier agency work, Clockwork, Windmill, The Nerdery (first stint) (2011 to 2015)

Accessibility-first interface work across Fortune 500, nonprofit, and government clients.

Web Programmer, National Marrow Donor Program / Be The Match (October 2004 to August 2011)

Seven years on HIPAA-compliant internal and public systems for a nonprofit healthcare organization. Designed and built a PGP-secured whistleblower system enabling anonymous misconduct reporting: an expression of the commitment to unbiased information and trustworthy channels now bearing fruit in Veridi.

Selected technical editing

Technical editor on two web-development books: Frahaan Hussain’s Responsive Web Design by Example and Shi Chuan’s HTML5 Mobile Development Cookbook. Books are searchable; named-author technical-editor credits are verifiable third-party endorsements.

Beyond code

Co-chaired an Allyship employee resource group for two years. Ten years teaching traditional singing and tradition-adjacent songwriting at the Center for Irish Music (concluded), with active performance in and around Irish and Scottish traditional music (currently with Irish Diplomacy); folk album released 2014 (Fearsome Critters), prior band work with Rumgumption (2003 to 2014).