Staff Engineer (Executive)
Staff Engineer | Executive Technical Partnership
The Engineer Who Says No — With a Quantified Tradeoff, Not a Complaint.
Staff Engineer who bridges engineering depth and executive decision-making, including knowing when to say "no." I make risk visible before it becomes cost.
Decisions Protected
Risk made visible
How I Partner
“Tyler is the kind of partner you hope for.”
Executive Signal
Engineer vs Executive Lens
Core Skills
Credentials
Execution Log
Staff Software Engineer | AI Systems Architect
Staff Software Engineer | AI Systems Architect
Led AI-powered modernization for a global platform (53 markets), architecting multi-agent systems that transformed migration velocity and engineering productivity. (IC track — AI migration systems and tooling)
Built multi-agent AI migration system with 5 specialized sub-agents, reducing endpoint migration time from hours to under 10 minutes—enabled 289 endpoint migrations at unprecedented velocity.
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.
Orchestrated 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.
Engineering Manager / Technical Lead
Engineering Manager / Technical Lead
Recruited to lead digital transformation of 289-endpoint legacy system. Achieved 96% production traffic on Laravel with zero major incidents while driving $336K+ annual cost savings. (Management track — platform modernization and delivery)
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 ($26K), 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.
Principal Engineer
Principal Engineer
Promoted to Principal Engineer to drive technical strategy for a platform processing $2B+ in transactions. Led cross-team architecture, pioneered early GenAI adoption, and single-handedly led flagship Instacart and Shopify integrations.
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.
Senior Lead Software Engineer
Senior Lead Software Engineer
Joined during a critical inflection point. Built the Operations engineering team from zero (just me) to 9 engineers, broke it into specialized squads, then transitioned to lead all three teams through a monolith-to-microservices migration during COVID-19 10x traffic surge.
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.
VP of Engineering & Lead Systems Architect (Founder)
VP of Engineering & Lead Systems Architect (Founder)
Founded and scaled a cross-border e-commerce marketplace from Zero-to-One, serving complex trade and financial flows between China and the U.S.
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, not a whiteboard.
Partnership Development: Negotiated technical integrations with 19+ payment gateways and 8+ logistics providers. Revenue couldn't grow without them; the integrations were the product.
Investor Communication: Represented technical strategy to investors and board, articulating product roadmap and competitive differentiation in business terms.
Regulatory Navigation: Achieved compliance with public company (LifeVantage LFVN - NASDAQ) requirements. Regulatory constraints were constraints on the product; I navigated both.
Principal Engineer
Principal Engineer
Recruited to a specialized task force working under Sir Tim Berners-Lee to engineer decentralized data ecosystems (Solid). Led a team of 6-8 remote developers rescuing a failing insurance fintech project.
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.
Coordinated blended remote/on-site team under pressure, maintaining stakeholder confidence through transparent communication and consistent weekly delivery milestones.
Founder & Principal Solutions Architect
Founder & Principal Solutions Architect
Led a boutique engineering consultancy delivering full-stack solutions for enterprise clients. Operated as Fractional CTO.
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.