Engineering leader and software architect with 20+ years of experience bridging the gap between product strategy and technical execution. Proven track record of scaling from Senior Engineer to Product Owner (CSPO) and ultimately Director of Software Engineering. Recognized for modernizing legacy architecture, drastically reducing cloud infrastructure costs, and aligning distributed, global engineering teams with business objectives to deliver robust cross-platform solutions.
- Distributed Team Leadership
- Product Ownership (CSPO)
- System Architecture & Design
- Cloud Infrastructure (AWS)
- CI/CD & DevOps Automation
- Performance Optimization
Professional Experience
- Promoted from Product Owner to Director of Software Engineering, scaling up to manage and retain a globally distributed 12-person engineering and design organization across the USA, Canada, and South Africa.
- Reduced AWS infrastructure costs by over 50% while stabilizing RPMs during peak loads, redesigning container architecture (decoupling Nginx and PHP) and rewriting inefficient SQL queries to drastically shrink the server footprint.
- Directed the technical launch of core B2B product verticals (scheduling, financing, insurance, payments), which improved sales and marketing outreach 10x by achieving feature parity with competitors.
- Overhauled developer experience (DX) and CI/CD pipelines, migrating local environments to Docker and implementing strict pre-deployment automated testing to eliminate build instability and enable safe, daily deployments.
- Improved Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) to 10 minutes and Issue Response Time to under 1 hour by implementing robust automations, monitoring alerts, and incident response processes.
- Progressed from Senior Developer to Technical Product Owner (CSPO), stepping up to bridge a critical visibility gap between engineering initiatives and executive product strategy.
- Led a critical performance optimization initiative following extreme platform load during the 2016 Giving Tuesday campaign; implemented frameworks that stabilized the platform to eventually process over $100M+ in single-day donation volume.
- Owned the Developer Infrastructure and CI/CD roadmap, successfully streamlining deployment frequency from quarterly releases to multiple times per day across backend, frontend, and mobile teams.
- Built the initial greenfield fundraising platform as a core developer, and later championed web accessibility improvements that resolved enterprise client requests and earned formal recognition from Microsoft.
- Improved multi-threaded core performance by architecting a stress-testing harness and resolving complex database deadlocks via execution plan analysis.
- Modernized legacy ActiveX components to support cross-browser infrastructure while maintaining codebase integrity.
- Architected a new Linux-based Advertising Platform from the ground up using C, Python, and MySQL.
- Developed graphical Linux applications on Python (C/C++ API) on top of the GTK+ framework, alongside native Chrome plugins.
- Managed production/staging server administration (Nginx, Apache) and developed client web applications using PHP and Python.
- Maintained legacy C++ POS systems for one of the world's largest fashion retailers and created an embedded Linux OS for sales communication.
- Led development on enterprise projects for banks and large clients; built custom Linux hardware drivers (RFID, Touchscreens) using C and Python.
Technical Arsenal
Go, PHP, Python, C++, JavaScript, SQL, AWS, Docker, Linux, Git, CI/CD