Staff Engineer (Executive)

Created open methodology framework for AI-assisted development. 19 MCP tools, 6-phase lifecycle, quality gates. Built the business case and shipped the product.

Designed multi-agent team coordination and persistent memory system. 2,600+ tests. In beta across 5 coding platforms with pilot teams.

Built multi-agent AI migration system with 5 specialized sub-agents, reducing endpoint migration time from hours to under 10 minutes, enabling 289 endpoint migrations.

Reverse-engineered legacy compiled Acucobol systems without source access, producing 45+ migration specifications (1.75MB/50,000+ lines) through AI-assisted bytecode analysis with 99%+ query accuracy.

Deployed 34 parallel AI agents for migration validation framework, achieving 90% error reduction in schema mapping (validation suite, before/after comparison).

Designed Truth Source Architecture enabling AI agents to consume documentation and refactor code without hallucination. Patterns now adopted organization-wide.

Built AI sprint intelligence system using historical transcripts as knowledge base. Benchmarked against human estimates at ±1 story point (blind comparison, 6 sprints), achieving 2.5x throughput (story points over 6 sprints) and 13% sprint efficiency gain.

Designed AI governance framework—read-only agent accounts, DevOps approval workflows, failure-as-state design principles—after identifying blast radius from an unscoped agent action.

Risk Translation: When leadership wanted to skip load testing, presented production failure cost vs. delay cost in business terms. We tested. Zero failures. Protected the revenue.

Structural Capital Recovery: Delivered $336K+ annual savings that finance quantified directly: cloud ($278K), DataDog 62.5% reduction ($12K to $4.5K/month), RDS ($32K). Technical wins in CFO language.

Deal Prevention: Built vendor evaluation framework that revealed hidden integration costs on proposed 10x ROI solution. Redirected investment to higher-value alternatives.

Executive Partnership: Drove decisions in strategic meetings for 2+ years: risks retired, timelines negotiated, investments redirected. Built credibility to push back when engineering judgment warranted it.

Strategic Guidance: Provided technical guidance to executive leadership on application roadmaps, risk management, and architectural investments, influencing multi-year planning cycles.

Investment Justification: Made the case for GPT-3 adoption when no one was asking for it. Built the business case that freed AI tooling budget and set the precedent for innovation spending.

Cross-Department Alignment: Partnered with Operations, Customer Service, and Product leadership to ensure technical decisions supported business objectives across all stakeholder groups.

Risk Management: Identified and mitigated architectural risks before they became business problems. Advised on technical debt tradeoffs with clear business impact analysis.

Built Operations engineering team from 0 (solo) to 9 engineers, then broke it into specialized squads: Operations backend, CS Support (Zendesk dashboard app), and backend API migration team.

Transitioned to lead all 3 teams simultaneously—12 engineers total across Operations, CS Support, and API migration—with clear ownership and delivery accountability.

Engineered backend optimizations handling 10x traffic surge during COVID with zero scaling incidents, while competitors experienced significant downtime.

Built platform recognized internally as gold standard for Testing, Stability, Documentation, Innovation, and cross-department collaboration.

Led migration from monolithic architecture to Event-Driven Microservices on Azure and Kubernetes, establishing patterns adopted company-wide.

Boosted application performance by 87% in first 90 days by refactoring critical backend paths and React frontend—establishing immediate credibility.

Founder-Level Strategy: As technical co-founder, shaped the business model and the architecture simultaneously. Platform capabilities had to match the China/US trade corridor reality -- customs, payments, latency across the Great Firewall.

Partnership Development: Negotiated technical integrations with 19+ payment gateways and 8+ logistics providers. Revenue couldn't grow without them; the integrations were the product.

Competitive Validation: Won 2nd place at international technology competition in China, validating the platform's technical strategy against global competitors.

Regulatory Navigation: Achieved compliance with public company (LifeVantage LFVN - NASDAQ) requirements. Regulatory constraints were constraints on the product; I navigated both.

Rescued failing insurance platform 6 months behind schedule by restructuring architecture and coordinating 6-8 remote developers—delivered on-time with zero regulatory compliance issues.

Delivered real-time quoting engine handling complex state-specific regulations for all 50 states, processing quotes in under 2 seconds across 200+ rule variations.

Kept the client in the loop with weekly demos. The team was remote and under pressure, but we shipped on time every week.

Secured and executed multiple NewBalance.com contracts, directing performance engineering that improved page load times 40% and increased conversion rates measurably.

Operated as Fractional CTO for 5+ enterprise clients simultaneously, managing end-to-end SDLC and establishing engineering standards that outlasted engagements.

Delivered performant, scalable web applications using Node.js, PHP, and Angular—building a consultancy with 100% client retention rate over 4 years.