SEP Blog

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2025 Exceptional Employer Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Tech Employer, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana – SEP has been named Exceptional Employer by TechPoint at the 26th annual Mira Awards. This award recognizes companies that are developing talent through skills-based hiring…
Read Full Post

From PDF Chaos to AI-Powered Organization: An Engineer’s Journey into Document Processing

How I built an intelligent document processing system using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), local LLMs, and Python – leveraging my code generation AI experience The Problem: Drowning in a Digital Morass Like many people, I had accumulated a large collection of PDF documents over the years – medical records, invoices, receipts, tax documents, insurance papers. […]
Read Full Post
using chatgpt on laptop

Generality in Generative AI is an Illusion

Large language models are often described as general-purpose problem solvers. That’s fair; given a prompt, they can write SQL queries, summarize academic papers, troubleshoot YAML files, produce a mediocre chili recipe, and draft HR emails, all in the same breath. That breadth of capability is a big driver of the current enthusiasm. Here’s the thing […]
Read Full Post
2025 SEP Summer Interns

Celebrating Our 2025 SEP Interns

This summer, SEP welcomed another incredible group of interns who jumped into real-world projects, asked great questions, and left their mark on our teams. From software engineering to AI-focused problem solving, each intern brought curiosity, fresh perspective, and a genuine excitement for learning. We asked a few of them to share what surprised them about […]
Read Full Post
Example screenshot of a factorio blueprint

Learning AI Optimization w/ Factorio 2: Modelling

What is this project? If you have not yet read the introduction, you can find it here. The abridged version is is: My goal is to create a system for determining the “best” possible Factorio factories based on footprint and cost to build. Modelling? So, one of the key things for making a maze solver, […]
Read Full Post
Paper airplanes flying. One green plane is leading the way.

SEP Strengthens Leadership Team with Key Promotions to Drive Future Growth

Westfield, IN, 06/30/2025 – SEP, a leader in software product development, announces key promotions as part of its long-term leadership strategy. As a 100% employee-owned company, SEP prioritizes succession planning and empowering leaders to ensure sustained success and alignment with its core values. Chris Atkinson,  has been promoted to Chief Delivery Officer. With nearly 30 […]
Read Full Post
Factorio logo

Learning AI Optimization w/ Factorio 1/x

Who am I? My name is Keith Hanson, I graduated from Rose-Hulman with a degree in Software Engineering in 2021. In my time since graduation I worked extensively with infrastructure as code and on backend systems. Notably what you won’t find in my project background is anything to do with AI. I took 1 course […]
Read Full Post
collage graphic of SEP 2025 software engineering interns

Meet Our 2025 Summer Interns!

Each summer, we welcome a new class of interns to SEP. These talented students bring fresh perspectives, curiosity, and enthusiasm to their teams—and this year is no exception. Let’s meet the 2025 software engineering and business operations interns, and hear what they’re excited to learn this summer!   Adnan Farid Software Engineering Intern School: University […]
Read Full Post

Navigating AI + Team Effectiveness with Llewellyn Falco: Highlights from SEPTalks

At a recent SEP Talks event—“AI, Team Effectiveness & the Future of Software Development”—we hosted a live fireside chat with industry expert Llewellyn Falco. We invited Llewellyn to help us think more deeply about the impact of AI on how we build software, collaborate, and grow as teams. What followed was a series of sharp […]
Read Full Post
SEP Welcomes Marty Draper

SEP Appoints Marty Draper as Vice President of IT, Security, and Compliance

WESTFIELD, IN, June 4, 2025 – SEP, a leading software product design and development firm, announces the appointment of Marty Draper as Vice President of IT, Security, and Compliance. This newly created role highlights SEP’s commitment to strengthening its foundation in technological advancement, data security, and regulatory practices. The addition of Draper positions SEP to […]
Read Full Post