Greater Chicago Area
Most engineering managers stopped writing code years ago. They love to talk about the glory days, back when they used to ship code. Not me. My glory days are right now [cue the Springsteen]. In the last six months I've merged double my team's average in PRs while managing ten engineers and doing more code reviews than anyone else. I'm not a manager who used to be an engineer. I'm kicking ass at both right now. (And I've got the data to prove it.) I'm actually most proud of another number: 50%. That's how much team throughput jumped the week after I built and shipped a new unified local dev CLI that sets up our entire platform with one command. And it's never come back down. Add to that the CI pipeline optimizations I built that landed a few weeks later that shaved off about 40% of our deploy time, and we've got more code shipping faster. Same people. Just friction removed by me. I've been doing this kind of work my entire career. At my last company I reduced AWS costs by over a million dollars a year, renegotiated six-figure vendor contracts—often cutting them by a third—and led two SOC 2 Type II certifications end to end. At an earlier startup I was the first IC engineer—and later engineering director—whose original systems were still running when the company sold for $525 million. On the people side: on top of normal day-to-day management, I find projects that stretch people in the right direction, growing their skills and leveling them up. I've also brought struggling engineers back to being productive. And I've made the hard calls when it wasn't working. On the executive side: I've written talk tracks and technical briefings for C-suite leaders presenting to boards and investors—translating complex engineering decisions into language that drives business decisions. And I've built prototypes that pivoted our product direction more than once Before all this, earlier in my career I was a data-focused journalist. Wrote two nonfiction books with Penguin Random House. Had my work cited in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. And my short fiction's been published in multiple literary journals. (My work was also selected for the 2026 Best Mystery Stories anthology, brag brag. This is actually a big deal. Please clap.) For the algorithms: Python · TypeScript · Go · Next.js · React · FastAPI · PostgreSQL · BigQuery · Kubernetes · AWS · GCP · OpenAI · Google Gemini · Claude Code · LLM/RAG Architecture · Model Context Protocol (MCP) · Distributed Systems · Large Language Models · AI/ML · Platform Engineering · Developer Experience · SaaS · Agile
Leading a team of ten software engineers—about half the company—across feature development, platform reliability, and technical strategy. I manage people, coordinate with GTM and product, and still write a lot of code. * Doubled team shipping velocity: built a unified local dev CLI (./dev) and CI pipeline optimizations that took the team from ~70 to 180+ PRs/week—sustained, not a spike * 95% reduction in production errors (from 5,000+/12h to ~250) driven by an AI-powered morning health check I built that monitors production daily * CI pipeline ~70% faster; local lint 12x faster; deploy times ~40% faster * Shipped 4 new data integrations personally: Notion, Clari Copilot, Highspot, Seismic * Rearchitected our data ingestion pipeline for Zoom, Slack, Salesforce, and email—taking ingesting data from ~4 hours to minutes * Led engineering pivot to chat-based AI intelligence platform: scoped the cut, led execution, got first version done before the first week was out * Built production smoke test suite with hourly canary * Led SOC 2 Type II compliance and certification end to end * Recruited and hired three new senior engineers * 24x revenue growth and 425% increase in deal sizes since joining
Independent consulting practice helping companies and leaders communicate better, build stronger cultures, and think more clearly about strategy. Work includes business strategy consulting, workshop facilitation, executive ghost-writing, and freelance copywriting. My first book, Adulthood for Beginners, was published by Penguin Random House in 2017 and translated into multiple languages. Second book, Big Problems, came out in 2020. My fiction has appeared in literary journals and been selected for the 2026 Best Mystery Stories anthology. I've lectured at dozens of colleges, led workshops for Fortune 10 companies, and spoken at more than 40 conferences.
Expanded scope to include customer support and GRC operations on top of Engineering Foundation, Infrastructure and Data. Accomplishments listed under Senior Engineering Manager below.
Led 12 people across three teams—including tech leads and another manager—on the Engineering Foundation, Infrastructure and Data squads. Owned infrastructure, data decisions, and developer experience for the entire engineering org, as well as SOC2 Type II compliance. * Reduced AWS costs by more than $1M YoY * Renegotiated multiple six-figure vendor contracts yielding ~50% savings * Led SOC 2 Type II compliance and certification—managed the team, coordinated with auditors, wrote code to surface evidence * Built fully automated CI/CD pipeline on Jenkins and ArgoCD—600% more deploys, frontend deploys 90% faster * Built new revenue pipeline providing accurate, up-to-date revenue modeling * Delivered multiple high-impact DX projects that measurably improved developer speed
Led a team of nine software engineers and data scientists/engineers on the Engineering Foundation and Data squads. * Reduced AWS costs by almost a third within months of starting * Introduced new systems for better error-handling tracking and assignment * Developed and introduced squad-focused sprint planning * Led quarterly roadmap planning for squads * Provided guidance, support and growth opportunities for individual contributors
Managed a team of developers and journalists who not only solved business solutions, but also helped the newsroom tell stories better. Altogether: * Moved multiple CMS to new platforms. * Led the research, planning and launching of a new newsletter system (and developed new newsletter products), which led to increased open rates. * Helped increase digital subscriptions above and beyond projections. * Built our elections coverage pages, including auto-updating results, election guides and more. * Worked on many award-winning data-oriented stories. * Regularly helped the newsroom analyze data and build graphics for stories in print and online. * Built data pipelines in Google BigQuery, Amazon S3 and Amazon Lambda functions for auditing purposes. * Built bespoke software in Django and Python for data scraping for storytelling and business solutions. * Reduced third-party software costs that more than covered my salary Consulted for 10 weeks after I left full-time position to help with transition and finish up final projects.
Managed APIs, databases, and core content architecture for a platform serving millions of daily users. Centralized and standardized production operations. Built, hired, and managed a distributed engineering team across eight cities and four time zones. Also served as technical lead for the platform maintenance team due to short staffing—leading both frontend React and backend engineers across product teams.
I identified, implemented and managed components of the company's technology infrastructure, including working with vendors, writing code to integrate systems, augmenting products with new capabilities and features, and working with designers and technologists to support their products with secure, scalable solutions. On top of this, I also ran a team of systems architects who worked on keeping a world-class, bespoke content management system running smoothly and efficiently in Amazon Web Services and other vendors, while simultaneously developing new features and implementing cost-saving measures.