Via leadership through OKRs Goals and KPIs, I led all (SaaS and Mobile app) development of uber secure browsing products in a late-stage, fast paced, rapidly growing startup. I provide leadership though the maturity stages towards achieving a high performing, productive, recognizable SaaS company. As Head of Engineering, I organized the Engineering Department (creating 3 product feature and 6 platform development teams, 6 QA teams from 1 large team of 20+), established a trusting and effective relationship with Product Management and SRE/Ops/InfoSec (Security) Teams, and applied best practices in a continuously improvement manner. I created and sustained an inclusive, positive, and fun culture based on talent growth and achievement. This includes the adoption of AI/ML to our new and legacy products as I championed the shift to an AI-first engineering approach - accelerating the inclusion of GenAI across the consumer product experiences and within the software development lifecycle. I managed, motivated, and inspired Directors, Senior Managers, and Engineers, creating and leading high performing engineering teams towards timely & predicable delivery of best-in-class software products. In addition to the main Engineering Department, I lead our Customer Service team, the A8Labs (Professional Services and an R&D team) and our company’s IT Department. Engineering excellence: Championing and ensuring engineering and operational excellence, establishing metrics and processes for regular assessment & improvement. Establishment and tuning of KPIs across the teams. Organizational Leadership: Proven ability to lead a team of engineering managers/directors, mentor next level down leaders, and build engineering teams in a high-growth environment. Strategically aligned the Engineering directors with the company direction, and communicated the vision and plan to the rest of the engineering department Ownership of the technical roadmap. Responsible for the investigation of new technologies, innovation, and the timely Technical Debt reduction. 85% OKR Success: Organizational Goals and metrics: Lead the introduction and refinement of Company and Departmental OKRs and personal goals. Influenced company goal setting by representing engineering’s current and future capacity and capabilities 75% KPI Success in Outcomes tracking and improvement: Installed, tracked and evaluated key performance metrics, objectives, dependencies, status, and results of a growing product portfolio Tripled (3X) Overall Engineering Capacity: Extended Engineering capacity via newly established efficiencies and opportunistic hiring in emerging technology locales and outside US borders. Worked with the executives, product teams, and finance teams to do capacity planning for future growth 95% Release Predictability: Established a record of 95% predictability and a steady state cadence for product release. +50% Engineering efficiency: Achieved reliable release and infrastructure (technical debt) cadence and an orderly direction towards proper CI/CD. Shift to a “Qualify first” mentality led to 50% fewer bugs and Level 1 support incidents Quantitative Roadmap based Hiring: Working with the executive team to develop and execute an engineering roadmap based on company and customer priorities and in collaboration with the Head of, calculated Engineering hiring strategies and needs, team by team. 4X Scaling: Engineering headcount from 20 to 80. By hiring 23 engineers and managers, achieved 100% of a 1 year OKR and 30% of 5-year staffing goal in first year. Tripled (3X) QA Headcount and Capacity: Re-imagined and revolutionized QA by targeted staffing, shift to Test Automation, transitioning to “in sprint” testing, and giving engineers time to innovate (recognize and master industry leading testing frameworks) Built 6 new Engineering Hubs/Locales: Introduction of International and US based Regional Hubs: For ROI purposes, seized staffing opportunities in “emerging tech” in domestic and foreign locales to establish several Development and Testing Hubs. Lead from HQ via local Managers/Lead Engineers. P&L: Product P&L Management. P&L responsibility and accountability for the entire profit and loss of the Engineering department. This includes revenue generated by the department (professional services), and all expenses incurred. Reporting to the board regarding P&L – establishing targets and milestones for profits and losses. Made strategic decisions to increase profitability, and ensuring that the department met its financial targets. 5-year plan Organization building: Established a 5-year plan for the Engineering Department; technical roadmap, organizational hierarch, the creation of new teams, and strategic hiring. Mentored departmental heads to provide similarly. $12M Budget: Successfully managed and owned Department budget not limited to but including current headcount, team development, education, tooling, hiring, social considerations, and retention. Scaled ARR from 25M to 33M+ / P&L: 40% reduction in project delivery time, slashing time-to-market by an average of 15% per product launch, and delivering a 30% year-over-year increase in ARR. Simultaneously, I implemented cost-saving measures that reduced operational expenses by 35%, resulting in a 20% improvement in P&L profitability. Strategist: my collaborative relationships with C-suite executives and company leaders have been instrumental in aligning engineering efforts with strategic business goals, consistently delivering significant P&L improvements. Predictability: achieved and sustained a 100% success rate of on-time project delivery Department reorganization: The Engineering Department by prioritizing Engineering objectives, installing Best Practices, in particular Agile using Jira. Backend, web side, and mobile app feature driven development Rapid-Growth: Scaling headcount by 300% while keeping an amazing 95% employee retention rate. Feature Teams: Provided multiple, concurrent product development and deployment by transitioning to multiple Feature Team(s) and Component Teams orientation Culture building: Ushed in a sense of joy and enjoyment in the work place and in social settings. Made Authentic8 a must destination for engineers in the market. Established AI and ML trained on large data sets and performing a variety of tasks. Personal Contributions: at least 3 Significant POCs: Coding/Development: I built 3 major POC/prototypes that eventually went into our product lines (Android/Kotlin: SMS messenger app, C++: Chromium Browser to host Authentic8 product in its UI -an “InfoBar”, Java: JiraClient). Additionally, routinely joined systems design discussions. Supported the CTO, and represented the engineering department at executive / leadership levels Technologies: AI/ML, Python & C++ backend. Front: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Vue.js, Node.js. Tooling: Java. Android: Kotlin. AWS + GCP. Microservices. Mobile: iOS, Android. Cloud. SAAS. Agile, UCD. Jira, Confluence, GraphQL