Vetted Executive & Leadership Professionals in California

“Director of Engineering at Proofpoint for 8 years, leading architecture and integration of Java microservices within a detection platform. Demonstrates pragmatic delivery leadership—incurring short-term cost to meet launch deadlines, then systematically paying down technical debt and optimizing AWS spend—plus a disciplined, long-horizon approach to backward-compatible API/schema evolution across many dependent services.”

“Engineering leader (12+ years Director, 17 years lead) focused on developer productivity and platform/framework work across Oracle, PlayStation, Workday, and CafePress. Notable for building distributed teams from scratch and delivering high-impact platform architecture—e.g., re-architected PlayStation’s upload pipeline to support 500GB–5TB submissions using browser-to-AWS chunked uploads with SNS/SQS and deduplication/resume support.”

“Seasoned operator with 20+ years across corporate and startup environments, currently serving as CEO of an AI-powered augmented reality company building a 3D heads-up display for cars. Has raised about $3M pre-Series A and is also advising another AR company on automotive commercialization and Series B fundraising, with a strong VC network in deep tech, mobility, and transportation.”

Gaurav Narasimhan

Screened

Executive AI platform leader specializing in autonomous agent systems for enterprise SaaS

Redwood City, CA26y exp

“Real estate entrepreneur who has previously raised capital from friends and family and has engaged directly with VC firms including A16z. Demonstrates unusually strong founder commitment, having worked two full-time jobs for the past six years while pursuing entrepreneurial goals, with hypothesys.ai described as the outcome.”

Daniel Benyamin

Screened

Executive AI and product leader specializing in media, advertising, and data platforms

Los Angeles, CA28y exp

“Serial entrepreneur in marketing and advertising who has founded four companies, most of them venture-backed. Has raised pre-seed and other venture funding multiple times, mentored at Techstars, and brings a strong investor network plus firsthand experience across the VC, accelerator, and launchpad ecosystem.”

Frank Goodman

Screened

Executive Engineering & Product Leader specializing in Cloud/SaaS observability and security

San Jose, CA31y exp

“Product/technology leader with deep security and cloud infrastructure expertise who drove a major shift from hardware-based networking/security appliances to cloud-native capabilities, growing cloud revenue from $0 to $400M in 4.5 years. Led an innovative eBPF-based approach (“precryption”) to enable lightweight cloud TLS interception/decryption, and has hands-on coding interest (recent Rust work on a personal cybersecurity identity/trust platform).”

“Led an end-to-end regional sourcing strategy at AMAT for consumables and high-value critical parts, including risk/mitigation planning, cross-functional execution, and executive-level reporting. Successfully influenced internal business unit leaders to shift procurement away from captive suppliers by validating and improving regional supplier capability and reliability, while building a repeatable playbook for the team.”

Shady Ashkar

Screened

Executive Technology & Engineering Leader specializing in SaaS, FinTech and HealthTech

Orange County, CA30y exp

“Engineering leader (Octane) who drove business-aligned technology roadmaps and scaled a fully distributed engineering org from 35 to 150 in 9 months using a rigorous ownership model (OARP). Led a greenfield architecture for a new vertical (AWS Lambda/ECS, Python/JS/React) that delivered an MVP in 3 months while cutting per-service cloud OPEX from ~$300+ to ~$20/month, with 15+ years of remote-first leadership experience.”