Vetted Executive & Leadership Professionals in California

“CTO-minded builder seeking to join a startup; previously created an AI-driven platform that abstracted away DevOps and infrastructure for drug discovery researchers. Emphasizes high-leverage, zero-to-one execution with managed cloud/open-source tooling, and a strong reliability/reproducibility mindset validated against existing scientific pipelines.”

UDAY JARAJAPU

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in AI-native products and large-scale platforms

Fremont, CA22y exp

“Experienced cross-functional operator with background in AI, edtech, consumer mobile, cloud, and real estate search, including roles at Apple, AWS, and Trulia. Currently building Typerighter, an AI-native writing workspace focused on compliance, authenticity, and human-verifiable content, with a nuanced understanding of institutional requirements and startup/accelerator dynamics.”

“Former VC and angel investor with board experience (Sand Hill Angels) who has raised money for their own companies and helped over two dozen companies prepare for fundraising and M&A. Strong fit for CEO roles in venture-backed environments given extensive capital markets and deal-prep exposure.”

Melanie Fawcett

Screened

Executive product and customer success leader specializing in AI/ML platforms

Redwood City, CA29y exp

“Product leader who founded the Product Analytics domain at DataRobot and drove discovery for an MLOps platform later recognized by Gartner. Stands out for combining deep customer research with hands-on NLP analysis to shape roadmap priorities, then translating that into a shipped product that drove retention and upsell.”

“Entrepreneurial candidate building an AI startup focused on helping companies find product-market fit. They are already at MVP stage with 3 beta customers and are using A/B testing for validation, showing early traction and a hands-on approach to customer-driven product development.”

“CTO-level leader with deep insurtech and cloud security/SaaS experience who has repeatedly scaled global engineering orgs and delivered high-velocity roadmaps. Most recently led Delos Insurance Solutions to launch new homeowners programs for wildfire-prone regions every 3–4 weeks while meeting DOI/SLA requirements, driving $135M GWP and $250M capacity and reaching cash-flow positive. Also led major scalability re-architecture at CloudPassage (Postgres to Cassandra + Kafka) and built a large Estonia-based engineering hub at Cybercube.”

“Engineering leader and player-coach with a long tenure leading 5 teams/17 engineers, combining organizational leadership with hands-on SQL, architecture, and production incident work. Particularly notable for shipping AI-powered lead engagement systems like an intelligent voice agent, while also driving operational improvements such as release cadence standardization, team restructures, database migrations, and major rules-engine performance gains.”

“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.”