Head of Engineering

Level All | Apr 2024 - Present

Responsibilities:

• First engineering leadership hire, managing 10 engineers and 2 QA building content platform for high school and college students.
• Collaborated with product counterpart to create and implement product development process within the team, as well as cross-functional quarterly planning process

Achievements:

• Developed standardized interview process with engineering team, hired 3 engineers in four months to complete transition to fully in-house engineering team
• With senior engineers, identified key areas of tech debt around content structure and reporting in Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView application to address in conjunction with product initiatives
• Led cross-company effort to attain SOC2 certification in support of securing key customers

Associate Director of Engineering, Digital Products

Museum of Modern Art | Jan 2023 - Apr 2024

Responsibilities:

• Engineering lead managing 6 engineers on two teams responsible for building the web presence for MoMA, internal tooling, and content management for 15M visitors annually.
• Created and executed new engineering hiring process with HR to improve competitiveness for engineering hiring in NYC market - hired 1 staff and 5 senior engineers
• Designed and implemented new requirements and development process with cross-functional peers to improve team collaboration

Achievements:

• Completed migration of Kubernetes application stack and local file storage from on-premise hosting to GCP to modernize CI/CD and reduce maintenance overhead
• Led effort to migrate the MoMA Learning/Art Terms pages, a key SEO driver for traffic to the website and primary home for educational content
• Built new online ticketing purchase flow to replace prior whitelabel third party solution, reduced checkout steps from 6 to 3 and created foundation for future improvements
• Planned and started implementation for full stack rewrite, including migration to a third party CMS platform, retiring legacy Rails/Go applications for JavaScript to improve developer velocity

Co-Founder/CTO

ShelfLife, Inc. | Sep 2020 - Dec 2022

Responsibilities:

• Co-founder for wholesale ingredients marketplace for food and beverage CPG manufacturers, raised $3M in seed funding
• Led engineering, product, design functions across the business - hired, trained, and managed a team of 7 engineers and 2 designers building marketplace, ordering, and three-way payments platform
• Owned build/buy decisions for all technology and product initiatives
• Worked with sales and customer success teams to conduct user research and prioritize new features

Achievements:

• In partnership with CEO, led two fundraising rounds from initial outreach to due diligence

Software Engineering Manager

Google | Aug 2019 - Sep 2020

Responsibilities:

• Engineering lead for the Google Keep, managing 12 engineers working on web, Android, and iOS platforms
• Work closely with product and user experience partners to develop a roadmap and define requirements for both consumer and enterprise projects
• Collaborate with technical lead on day to day execution of the team while improving maintainability of the codebase

Achievements:

• Worked closely with PM and UX counterparts to develop new vision for Keep, focusing on better content creation in the near term and broader GSuite Integrations long term
• Drove effort with PM and UX counterparts to develop key engagement metrics for Keep, mapping them to an engagement funnel, and using for project prioritization
• Led a number of cultural changes for the team, including regular retros, increased social and team-building events, and establishing distributed working norms in light of COVID-19

Director of Engineering, Consumer

Blue Apron | Oct 2018 - May 2019

Responsibilities:

• Manage 20 engineers across NYC, Austin, and Ukraine owning for the customer facing portions of Blue Apron including the website, native apps, and internal tools
• Evolving the team roadmap, technology, and architecture, leading brainstorming and planning sessions
• Coach and mentor managers of engineers, providing career guidance and holding regular one-on-one sessions
• Work closely with recruiting and head of engineering to manage budget and develop hiring goals
• Partner with business stakeholders and executive team to develop and align on company initiatives
• Maintain a high bar for code quality through process improvements and defining standards

Achievements:

• Began weekly department newsletter, improving communication and significantly increasing awareness amongst the broader team
• Revamped product development process after full changeover in product and design teams, improving collaboration and execution on new projects
• Represented as head of consumer product after a departure, developing the digital product strategy and planning with executive team

Senior Engineering Manager

Blue Apron | Aug 2017 - Oct 2018

Responsibilities:

• Lead the Growth and Member Experience teams leading engineering efforts around customer acquisition, merchandising, and personalization
• Responsible for the evolving the team roadmap, technology, and architecture, leading brainstorming and planning sessions
• Coach and mentor a team of engineers, providing career guidance and holding regular one-on-one sessions
• Partner closely with recruiting to build out the team
• Maintain a high bar for code quality through code reviews and helping the team think through edge cases
• Facilitate sprint planning sessions and team retrospectives
• Partner with other engineering teams, departments, and stakeholders to align on broader engineering and company initiatives

Achievements:

• Began bimonthly culture surveys with teams, leading to improved engagement
• Worked with recruiting team to develop recent college grad and intern boot camp to help improve onboarding experience
• Built out improvements in experimentation platform, making it easier to run experiments. Spoke about updates at several meetups and presented at eTail East

Engineering Manager

Blue Apron | Aug 2016 - Aug 2017

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the evolving the team roadmap, technology, and architecture, leading brainstorming and planning sessions
• Coach and mentor a team of engineers, providing career guidance and holding regular one-on-one sessions
• Partner closely with recruiting to build out the team
• Maintain a high bar for code quality through code reviews and helping the team think through edge cases
• Facilitate sprint planning sessions and team retrospectives
• Partner with other engineering teams, departments, and stakeholders to align on broader engineering and company initiatives

Achievements:

• Piloted new cross-functional squad structure and developed best practices to implement across other teams
• Standardized areas around interviewing and new hire onboarding across entire engineering organization
• Developed close partnerships with several vendors to better support critical business needs like performance and experimentation

Software Development Manager

eBay, Inc. | May 2014 - Jun 2016

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with an experienced product, quality, & design team to build beautiful, intuitive experiences in a high-visibility environment
• Manage roadmap planning and sprint scheduling, working closely with product and quality partners
• Provide guidance and leadership on major technical initiatives both within the team and across the company
• Work closely with site operations team to give technical support for issues related to the homepage
• Provide training and mentorship to ensure continuous professional development of engineering team

Achievements:

• Led several major engineering projects focused on improving code quality, performance, and availability ensuring a highly reliable homepage
• Partnered with multiple teams across eBay to work in collaboration on new site features delivered across multiple platforms
• Hired and onboarded three new full time engineers, as well as managed four interns

Software Engineer

eBay, Inc. | May 2013 - May 2014

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with an experienced product & design team to build beautiful, intuitive experiences in a high-visibility environment
• Handle service calls efficiently and manage data representation for template rendering
• Use best practices to write clean, maintainable code for the project, and elegant, usable experiences for users
• Own major projects and features from design phase to coding and testing

Achievements:

• Built new version of homepage for legacy browser users of eBay (IE up to 7, Firefox up to 14) and for use in service failure/fallback mode, launched to 10% of traffic across 22 countries
• Instrumental in incorporating new social features into the Feed as part of the eBay 3.0 launch - feed now collects and collates updates from four different services into a unified presentation
• Designed and implemented Node.JS based tool for content curators to update the eBay Today page

Long Range Radar Engineer

L-3 Communications, Inc. | Sep 2011 - Apr 2013

Responsibilities:

• Subject matter expert serving as an authoritative source of engineering-level information on long-range radar systems. Manages complex radar-related projects. Original-thought is required to identify, elevate, recommend, manage, and resolve issues that may negatively impact radar detection capability, as applicable for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC)
• Provides engineering-level assistance necessary to investigate, evaluate, and analyze radar system performance, including associated interface equipment, data processors, and communications components
• Prepares written reports and provides briefings and recommendations to senior leadership concerning radar performance concerns and radar related points of interest (POI's)

Achievements:

• Created management and workflow database to help automate and simplify cumbersome radar Obstruction Evaluation (OE) management process
• Provided recommendations to use deliverables from the Wind-Turbine, Radar Modeling Tool (WT/RMT) project
• Presented a 4-hour block of instruction detailing the signal and data processing of the Common Air Route Surveillance Radar (CARSR)
• Performed in-depth analysis of command and control system performance during high clutter situations

Business Development and Technology Director

Indie Ogden | Feb 2012 - Apr 2013

Responsibilities:

• Create schedules and delegate action items for team, manage day-to-day operations and timelines of projects
• Attract and manage sponsor leads, drive new business through cold calls and emails, network at events
• Manage finances
• Manage and maintain technology support, including development of new website themes
• Contribute to site posting and content creation

Achievements:

• Planned and organized first ever Indie Ogden Awards, a community nominated/community voted recognition for local Ogden businesses. Over 2500 readers participated in voting for over 100 businesses in 31 categories. Awards ceremony attendance beat expectations with over 300 people present, raising $2000 dollars
• Created and designed dedicated site for the Indie Ogden Awards, promoting businesses, voting, and the Awards ceremony through the process
• Set up formalized financial tracking and accounting system; opened bank account and simplified finances

Radar Systems Integration Officer

84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, USAF | Jun 2010 - Aug 2011

Responsibilities:

• Managed and led the quality assurance process for a $2.6M/year contract, performing monthly inspections, tracking expenditures, and managing relationship with base procurement team
• Developed and integrated $8M of highly-specialized communication hardware and analysis/monitoring software tools utilized in radar data recording, analysis, and evaluation; involved meeting with users and developing requirements

Achievements:

• Developed radar obstruction database & automated evaluation process—cut technician assessment time 40% and saved 1,560 man-hours/year
• Led unit contracting effort, in-sourcing of 14 positions; de-scoped contract saved $1.6M annually
• Led unit inspection preparation, coordinated checklist for 1,386 items; 97% compliance (up 9% from previous year)

Officer In Charge, Support Section

84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, USAF | Sep 2008 - Jun 2010

Responsibilities:

• Led a team of 5 military, civilian & contracted personnel who performed travel coordination, deadline management, wrote and edited technical reports, and managed a document library
• Primary contract Quality Assurance Officer; led the management of six service contracts totaling $2.8M annually

Achievements:

• Led $5M support contract re-compete; assembled and formatted 178 technical requirements
• Elected to Hill Company Grade Officer Council Secretary position, helped direct 153 officers in 18 volunteer events, raised $4K for Habitat for Humanity

Orientation Coordinator

Seattle University | Jan 2007 - Dec 2007

Responsibilities:

• Planned and led weekly training and development sessions for 55 Orientation Advisors
• Assisted Director of New Student and Family Programs with planning new student orientation for 780 new students
• Planned and executed three summer orientation sessions for 150 students each and a staff of 25 Orientation Advisors
• Worked in a tight-knit team with four other students