I’m an engineering leader with 15+ years building teams and systems across embedded hardware, cloud platforms, and AI/ML. I’ve worked at the intersection of physical products and software — from programming PLCs and robots at General Motors, to launching AI-powered products at a venture-backed startup, to leading platform teams at Cisco and H-E-B.
My approach to leadership comes down to a quote from a peer review: “Goldilocks-like sense for interventions — never too much nor too little; just right.” I build the organizational and technical systems that make repeatable delivery possible, then trust the people doing the work.
Outside of work I build things for fun — a Culver’s Flavor of the Day tracking system, an F1 profanity bleeper that replaces swear words with vegetables, and whatever else catches my attention.
Career Timeline
Team Leader, R&D Architectural Controls — Current 15-engineer multi-disciplinary team (software, electrical, mechanical, manufacturing, test) across US and Canada. Leading development of a new product family with ~100 product concepts across 8 product lines.
Senior Engineering Manager — Cisco Systems (2021–2024) Scaled a global team to 14 engineers. Led FedRAMP compliance, co-chaired the AI Guild, deployed LLM-powered summarization into production, and coordinated the Spring4Shell (CVE-2022-22965) response across 23 teams.
Engineering Manager — H-E-B (2019–2021) Led migration from monolithic Oracle ATG to event-driven microservices. Built the Wormhole/Haystack search pipeline handling 30% of production traffic via Kafka and Elasticsearch.
Director of Engineering — Senseye (2018–2019) Scaled engineering from 4 to 12. Built high-scale AWS video processing pipeline (200 days → 14 days). Launched 3 AI-powered products.
Product Performance & Quality Manager — Kasita (2017–2018) Built a factory from an empty building to production in 60 days.
NPD Product Engineer — YETI Coolers (2015–2016) Led 4 NPD teams, 14+ products from ideation to mass production. US patent holder (US10,034,580B2).
Project Manager II / Manufacturing Engineer — Electronic Theatre Controls (2008–2014) 20+ hardware and software product releases across three continents. UL/CE/FCC regulatory compliance. Designed and built a rigging test machine that saved $1M+.
Controls Engineer — General Motors (2000–2006) 50+ Allen Bradley PLCs and Fanuc robots across general assembly, paint, and body shop.
Education
- M.S. Materials Science and Engineering — Illinois Institute of Technology (2008)
- B.S. Manufacturing Engineering — Kettering University (2004)
- PMP — Project Management Institute (2013)
- CSM — Scrum Alliance (2014)