James Puckett
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Open to Director and VP of Technology roles · Remote first
Director of Technology · VP of Technology · Senior System Architect
Valdosta, GA

Twenty-five years running the company.
Still writing the code.

James G. PuckettEnterprise architect and technology executive

Founder, President and CEO of ECG, Inc. from 2001 to 2026, owning the P&L and a $3.6M engineering budget while staying its principal architect. Moved 1.3 million voicemail boxes to the cloud 45 days ahead of deadline with no downtime. Kept a geo-redundant platform running for more than 200,000 users for more than 15 years.

See the migration Email
Portrait of James G. Puckett in a dark suit and purple tie
JGP · Valdosta
2026
0M
Mailboxes migrated
0days
Ahead of deadline
0K+
Platform users
0yrs
Founder and CEO
The thesis

The architect belongs in the code.
That is how systems stay up.

Enterprise systems rarely fail on the whiteboard. They fail in the handoff between the people who design them and the people who build and run them. For 25 years I ran a company without giving up the build, so the architecture, the migration plan, and the production code all answered to the same person.

Operating principle, 25 years applied
Signature case

1.3 million mailboxes, moved 45 days early.

A Tier 2 provider had to get every voicemail box off its legacy platform, and the vendor-led plan was no longer viable. So I replaced it with six coordinated teams running a phased migration engine I designed. Every setting, message, and prompt came across, and customers never saw downtime.

Legacy platform 1.3M voicemail boxes Cloud platform no downtime
1.3MBoxes moved
45Days early
0Settings lost
0Messages lost
0Prompts lost
0Downtime

Phased engine. Six teams moving mailboxes in coordinated phases, each box arriving with its settings, messages, and prompts intact.

6 teams
Coordinated under one phased plan after the vendor-led approach stopped being viable.
0 lost
No settings, messages, or prompts dropped across 1.3 million mailboxes, and no downtime for customers.
45 days
Finished ahead of the deadline the provider was working against.
About

Founder, CEO, and principal architect.

ECG started in August 2001 as an engineering and software firm. Over 25 years it grew into a business delivering architecture services, proprietary platforms, colocation, and 24/7 NOC operations to enterprises, government agencies, and service providers, peaking at 42 people and $4.4M in revenue in 2024.

As CEO I owned the P&L and a $3.6M engineering budget, led five direct reports including the CFO, VP of Operations, and VP of Engineering, and personally hired and reviewed engineers. Vendor RFI/RFPs were mine to run, and so was translating technical trade-offs for university presidents, federal agency leaders, and carrier executives.

As principal architect I never stopped building. Production code in Java/Spring Boot, Angular, Kotlin, Python, and Go on AWS, and platforms like Alpaca that service providers still pay for today.

The ECG consulting practice is being sold in 2026, and I stay on its board through year end. Next, I want to build the internal enterprise systems an organization depends on every day, especially in healthcare, insurance, logistics, and B2B.

James G. Puckett, head and shoulders portrait
James G. Puckett
BS Computer Science · Valdosta, GA
Case studies

Deadlines kept and platforms that stayed up.

01
ECG, Inc. · Statewide network
Founder, President & CEO
81 days
Against a 90-day contract
The statewide network

First customer lines live on a new statewide network, nine days early.

The network serves every state agency in a top-10-population state. The contract allowed 90 days to get the first lines live. Five parallel workstreams did it in 81.

81
Days to first lines
5
Parallel workstreams
9
Days to spare
02
ECG, Inc. · Nationwide platform
Principal Architect
15+ years
In continuous operation
The platform that stayed up

A geo-redundant platform for more than 200,000 users.

Built to move a client off a white-label service, then kept running nationwide for more than 15 years, with high availability and disaster recovery designed into the architecture.

200K+
Users served
15+
Years running
HA/DR
Designed in
03
DURO Communications · 2000 to 2001
Director of CLEC Operations
38%
Lower telecom costs
The consolidation

More than 50 acquired networks folded into one backbone.

DURO grew through more than 50 ISP and CLEC acquisitions. My job was to consolidate the acquired networks onto one centralized ATM/IP backbone, tighten vendor management, and move 400,000 mailboxes onto a single email platform, retiring about 40 legacy UNIX/NT servers.

25%
Lower network SG&A
400K
Mailboxes merged
~40
Servers retired
How I run a modernization

Four moves that get legacy systems to the cloud intact.

The same pattern behind the voicemail migration, the statewide network, and the university PBX move.

01
Face the plan honestly

Replace a plan that has stopped working.

When the vendor-led migration plan was no longer viable, the answer was not to push harder on it. It was to design a new approach, a phased migration engine, and put the teams behind it.

1.3MMailboxes moved after the plan was replaced
02
Parallelize the work

Split the job into coordinated workstreams.

Six coordinated teams on the voicemail migration. Five parallel workstreams on the statewide network. Work that runs side by side, under one plan, is how a fixed deadline turns into an early finish.

81 of 90Contract days used on the statewide network
03
Test before you port

Prove each group works before it moves.

Moving a major public research university off a legacy PBX meant testing each department before porting it, so any downtime stayed inside maintenance windows.

27,000+University users moved off a legacy PBX
04
Build for the audit and the outage

Design in recovery and compliance from day one.

Geo-redundancy and disaster recovery in the architecture. HIPAA-aware design where patient data is involved. NIST 800-53, HIPAA, and IRS 1075 findings remediated. Secure CI/CD with SonarQube and Veracode, and a root cause analysis on every high-impact or security incident.

15+ yearsOne platform kept running for 200,000+ users
Hands-on engineering

Platforms I designed, wrote, and shipped.

Platform · ECG

Alpaca

A provisioning and call center reporting platform for service providers, built in house and still earning revenue today.

13
Service providers at peak
Machine learning · ECG

FraudStopper

A machine-learning engine that scores hundreds of millions of call records.

Java 21 · Spring AI

BroadWorks MCP

Exposes BroadWorks operations to LLM agents, secured with OAuth 2.1.

Go · AWS EKS · CDK

EmailMCP

A multi-user server that gives AI agents IMAP/SMTP email access.

Healthcare · ECG

HIPAA-aware phone system

Designed and managed a phone system handling limited patient data to HIPAA-aware standards.

Languages

JavaSpring BootAngularKotlinPythonGoSQL

Cloud

AWS EKSECSLambdaBedrockDockerKubernetesHelm

Delivery

CloudFormationCDKAnsibleGitHubJenkinsSonarQubeVeracode

Data and identity

KafkaMongoDBDynamoDBREST APIsSAMLOktaOAuth2

Communications

SIP/SIPRECUCaaSBroadWorksContact center
Career

Thirty years of building systems and the companies that run them.

Aug 2001 / Jul 2026
Founder, President & CEO and Principal Architect
ECG, Inc. · Valdosta, GA
Built and led an engineering and software firm for 25 years while staying its principal architect and a hands-on coder. Moved 1.3M voicemail boxes to the cloud 45 days early, put a statewide network live in 81 days, ran a 200,000-user platform for 15+ years, and built Alpaca and FraudStopper.
$3.6M eng. budget42 people at peak90+ deployments
25
Years as CEO
2026
Integration Projects
Independent · Remote
Built BroadWorks MCP and EmailMCP to connect existing enterprise systems to LLM agents. Public on GitHub.
Java 21GoAWS EKS
2
Servers shipped
Jan 2000 / Aug 2001
Director of CLEC Operations, later promoted
DURO Communications, Inc. · Orlando, FL
Consolidated more than 50 acquired ISPs and CLECs onto one backbone, cutting telecom costs 38% and network SG&A 25%. Retired about 40 legacy servers by moving 400,000 mailboxes onto one platform. Built reciprocal compensation billing and collected from carriers under Sprint, BellSouth, and Alltel agreements.
38% cost cut25% SG&A cut50+ acquisitions
38%
Telecom cost cut
Nov 1995 / Dec 1999
Co-Founder and Director of Network Operations
Surf South, Inc. and OptiLINK Communications, Inc. · Valdosta, GA
Co-founded the ISP Surf South with three partners. Our staff also ran OptiLINK's CLEC network for 80,000 customers at nearly 50% EBITDA through its acquisition by DURO Communications.
Co-founder80,000 customers
~50%
EBITDA
Proof

The record, by the numbers.

1.3M
Voicemail boxes
Moved to the cloud, 45 days early, no downtime
Tier 2 provider
81 / 90
Contract days
First lines live on a new statewide network
Statewide network
200K+
Platform users
Geo-redundant, running for 15+ years
Nationwide client
27,000+
University users
Moved off a legacy PBX inside maintenance windows
Public research university
13
Service providers
On Alpaca at its peak, still earning revenue
ECG platform
$3.6M
Engineering budget
Owned alongside the full P&L
ECG, Inc.
$4.4M
Peak revenue
42 people at the 2024 peak
ECG, Inc.
400K
Mailboxes consolidated
About 40 legacy servers retired
DURO
Credentials

Education, certifications, and what comes next.

Undergraduate
BS, Computer Science
Valdosta State University
Intellectual property
Patent pending
U.S. Provisional Application 63964711, 2026
Certifications and clearance
BroadSoft (Cisco) BroadWorks Engineering Professional
US DOJ Public Trust Clearance, inactive
Target roles
  • Director of Technology
  • VP of Technology
  • Senior System Architect
  • Solutions and Enterprise Architect
Where and how

Remote first. Hybrid in or near Valdosta, Atlanta, Jacksonville, or Orlando.

Full-time roles building internal enterprise systems, especially in healthcare, insurance, logistics, and B2B.

Get in touch

Have a system that has to work every day?

Open to Director of Technology, VP of Technology, and Senior System Architect roles. Remote first, based in Valdosta, Georgia. Send me the problem and we can talk through the architecture.

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