# John Breen

> Forward Deployed Engineer and product leader who architects and ships AI systems that run the work, not just assist with it. Currently Digital Product Lead at Nightingale.

John Breen builds AI systems that ship. He starts by understanding how an organization actually operates, finds where the friction is, then builds, deploys, and refines systems that run continuously and improve over time. He owns the full arc: the integrity of the data underneath, the transformation roadmap, and the production engineering that makes adoption real. Part product thinker, part engineer, always biased toward shipping measured outcomes.

- Name: John Breen
- Title: Forward Deployed Engineer, Digital Product Lead at Nightingale
- Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada
- Email: johnbreenbusiness@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.sedonastudio.ca
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwilliambreen/
- Behance: https://www.behance.net/johnnybdesign
- Resume (PDF): https://www.sedonastudio.ca/John-Breen-Resume.pdf

## Experience

### Digital Product Lead, Nightingale (2025 to July 2026)
Rebuilt the entire digital presence of a furniture manufacturer that has made seating since 1928, taking it from paper catalogs and a broken website to a custom Shopify platform. Owned the transformation roadmap and shipped it end to end across brand, platform, data, and AI. Digitized decades of product data (products, pricing, specifications, records) that lived on paper and in PDFs, moving it into a clean, de-duplicated Postgres database that answers questions with AI and generates price lists automatically, shipped as a standalone app with SKU-aware search. Designed and built production AI systems on AWS serverless (API Gateway and Lambda), including an autonomous imaging platform with generation queues, observability, and built-in lead capture, plus a real-time 3D configurator with live pricing.

### Founder and Principal, Breener (2025 to present)
Founded Breener, the technology partner for commercial furniture: brand, e-commerce, product data, and applied-AI systems for a legacy industry modernizing its operations. Full-stack delivery from strategy through production.

### Founder and Engineer, GiddyUp Sports (2021 to 2024)
Built automation tools that gave fantasy players a competitive edge across all four major North American sports on Yahoo, ESPN, and Sleeper. Scaled to 10,000+ monthly users on AWS Lambda and MongoDB, then acquired.

### Product Designer, Konrad Group, client Deloitte (2023)
Designed an AI-assisted enterprise search system for a global professional-services firm, serving a knowledge platform used in 150+ countries. Built on a dual-model retrieval and generative architecture, tuned precision and recall, and delivered the AI proof of concept that made knowledge easier to find. Role: Associate User Experience Designer.

## Selected Projects

### HiveMade
Live: https://hivemade.ca
A farm-based skincare brand, a honey and royal jelly face cream made from the beeswax and honey of its own hives. Designed and built the online store on Shopify, from brand story and product pages to checkout, with email campaigns through Resend. Built with Shopify, Resend, and Figma. Case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/hivemade

### bpkm
Live: https://bpkm.app
Co-founded bpkm, the first AI running agent. Cadence-matched playlists, an AI coach you can talk to mid-run, and a record of the songs you actually run faster to. Case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/bpkm

### Nightingale Chairs
Live: https://nightingalechairs.com
A full Shopify rebuild for a furniture manufacturer making seating since 1928: brand and platform, a de-duplicated product-data infrastructure with AI-powered search and automatic price lists, a textile library, trade-focused search, and a real-time 3D configurator. Built with Shopify, AWS, Vercel, Clerk, custom Shopify API, and Figma. Case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/nightingale

### NHL Cap Management (GiddyUp Sports, for Utah Mammoth)
Salary-cap management software for the NHL club Utah Mammoth, built under GiddyUp Sports. Case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/nhl-cap

### Konrad AI Enterprise Search (client Deloitte)
An AI-assisted enterprise search system on a dual-model retrieval and generative architecture, serving a knowledge platform used in 150+ countries. Case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/konrad

### Fantasy Football Roundup
Live: https://www.fsroundup.com
Fantasy sports analytics and a draft assistant: live tier breaks, player comparisons, statcast-style metrics, and boards re-ranked across the season.

## Education

- Honours Bachelor, Global Business and Digital Arts, University of Waterloo (2020 to 2024)
- Computer Science, University of Guelph (2018 to 2020)

## Skills

- AI and Data: production AI agents, applied LLMs, evals and observability, Postgres / Supabase, Convex, data governance and integrity, AWS (Lambda, API Gateway), MongoDB
- Engineering: React, React Native, JavaScript, Python, Tailwind, Three.js, Vercel
- Shopify: custom themes (Online Store 2.0, Liquid, sections and blocks), metafields and metaobjects, embedded apps (Polaris, App Bridge), Admin and Storefront APIs (GraphQL and REST), webhooks
- Product and Leadership: transformation roadmaps, product strategy, stakeholder adoption and change, KPIs and dashboards, UX/UI, Figma

## Links

- Portfolio: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio
- About: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/about
- HiveMade case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/hivemade
- bpkm case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/bpkm
- Nightingale case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/nightingale
- Konrad case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/konrad
- NHL Cap Management case study: https://www.sedonastudio.ca/portfolio/nhl-cap