John Ruark

Software Engineering Executive | AI Development Leader and Contributor | Software Process Enabler

Harvard, Massachusetts, United States

About

I am a proven leader of R&D organizations and founder of a leading supply-chain optimization software company with a successful exit. I combine software expertise and process leadership with an operations research background to bring a unique analytical focus to software development. While leading all aspects of development, support, QA, and IT, I have managed the reliable and on-time release, delivery, and support of complex analytical software through more than fifty development cycles for over sixteen years.

Experience

  • Senior Director at Aptean
    Apr 2025 - Present · 1 yr 3 mos

  • Logility (Full-time · 25 yrs 11 mos)
    • Senior Vice President of Engineering and Chief Architect
      Dec 2021 - Present · 4 yrs 7 mos

      The engineering team at Logility develops world-class supply-chain planning solutions for manufacturers. We are an agile, world-wide team with deep expertise in numerous development and delivery technologies.

    • Chief Architect
      Jan 2020 - Dec 2021 · 2 yrs

      As lead architect on the Logility Technology Team, I helped drive adoption of cloud-native technologies for our supply-chain solutions. My group established web-service standards, provided internal training to accelerate product team development and adherence to standards and best practices, and increase adoption of security standards.

    • Chief Technology Officer, Inventory Optimization Solutions
      Aug 2000 - Jan 2020 · 19 yrs 6 mos

      I served as the CTO of Inventory Optimization Solutions, continuing my work from Optiant, which was acquired by Logility in March, 2010 (see my Optiant summary). I also worked as an architect for the Voyager Suite of products, defining, designing, and implementing components that service the entire product line. Logility’s Voyager Inventory Optimization product is used by many global manufacturers to optimally set and manage safety stock targets throughout their supply chains. Voyager IO runs in production at companies with billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of thousands of items across many locations.

  • Chief Technology Officer at Optiant, Inc.
    Aug 2000 - Mar 2010 · 9 yrs 8 mos

    I co-founded Optiant, Inc., a pioneer in the market of supply-chain design and optimization software. Optiant was acquired by Logility, Inc., part of American Software (NASDAQ:AMSWA), on March 22, 2010. I served as technology visionary and head of research, product development, product management, and information systems. My activities included managing the entire engineering team, overseeing product design, delivery, and support for multiple products over many years. I worked with major accounts to determine strategic product direction, contributed to raising a multiple-million dollar Series A financing with Battery Ventures, and served on the Board of Directors for four years. Our flagship product, PowerChain Inventory, won Industry Week’s 2002 Technology of the Year.

  • Adjunct Lecturer at Boston University
    2004 - 2005 · 1 yr

    Twice taught Boston University course CS411, Software Engineering, a higher-level undergraduate computer science course surveying all aspects of software engineering processes from requirements gathering and agile development methodologies to design, construction, testing, and metrics.

  • Senior Software Engineer at Kenan Systems Corporation (Lucent Technologies)
    Jun 1998 - Oct 1999 · 1 yr 5 mos