Vetted Chief Technology Officers

MichaelJose Oakes

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Senior Unity/XR Engineering Manager specializing in real-time interactive and multiplayer experiences

9y exp

“Unity Technologies engineer with direct Meta subcontract experience shipping Quest titles (Horizon Worlds projects like Super Rumble) and supporting third-party studios. Strong in VR performance optimization and modernization work—porting legacy OVR/older-Unity projects to OpenXR, URP, and hand-tracking inputs. Built a master’s dissertation cross-platform multiplayer FPS spanning Quest VR, PC, and mobile AR using Photon.”

RajaSekhar Divakaruni

Screened

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in Payments and Financial Services

Edison, New Jersey21y exp

“Senior Director-level engineering leader from Zelle who built a multi-year cloud and use-case expansion roadmap (e.g., SMB and brokerage funding) aligned to an aggressive growth target (from $1.2T to $5T in 5 years). Experienced scaling an engineering org from ~25–30 people into domain-driven pods and leading audit/compliance remediation (OCC, SOC 2, PCI) through security and infrastructure reengineering, including multi-region/multi-zone architecture.”

“Entrepreneur building a platform to turn clinically/technically validated medical device innovations (not yet commercialized in Western markets) into acquisition-ready companies by tightly controlling execution. Focuses on selecting technologies with execution risk (not clinical/technical risk) and running them through a structured program framework designed around acquisition criteria from day one.”

Vela Sivasankaran

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in cloud, telecom, and digital transformation

Virginia, USA16y exp

“Former founder of a financial services technology startup that is currently on hold for family reasons. Has hands-on startup fundraising exposure from employee roles, including presenting proof-of-concept demos to venture capital firms, and brings a strong focus on fraud prevention, safeguards, and regulatory compliance.”

Jingyao Chen

Screened

Junior Backend/Platform Engineer specializing in AI microservices and cloud-native systems

Pittsburgh, PA2y exp

“Cofounder at MeowyAI who shipped a production multimodal (vision/voice/text) AI task manager using Gemini, tackling real-world issues like hallucinations, tool-calling safety, and RAG-based preference memory. Also built a production multi-agent RAG system orchestrated with LangGraph (and contributes to LangChain), with strong emphasis on latency optimization, observability (OpenTelemetry), and rigorous testing/evaluation including A/B tests and adversarial prompting.”

“Founder of ThreatTape, a bootstrapped security consulting and software development company, funding growth through early client revenue rather than outside capital. They have gone through the Y Combinator process, spoken with angel investors in Atlanta, and built Ostraq, a secure online elections platform now being discussed with Georgia state officials for potential statewide adoption.”

“Bootstrapped-startup CTO and former founding engineer who has built products end-to-end as a solo developer across web and games. Led Grublify’s Next.js/TypeScript site (Strapi + Shopify), including a blog that reached ~5k monthly visitors and performance work like progressive loading/infinite scroll. Also implemented a resilient USDA nutrition ingestion pipeline with retries, partial-failure handling, and computed nutrient metrics.”

Edward Yeh

Screened

Director-level Data Engineering & MDM leader specializing in enterprise data platforms

Hunt Valley, MD20y exp

“Former Xendit (YC-backed fintech) operator applying outcome-driven, scalable product-building experience to a new startup: a real-time, personalized real estate investment intelligence platform. Has begun prototyping, completed ROI analysis, and validated the space with US market research plus broker interviews in Chicago and Los Angeles, aiming to differentiate from Zillow/Redfin with goal-based ranked investment recommendations.”

Richard Ferguson

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in government, cloud, and cybersecurity

Reno, NV31y exp

“Founder with a bootstrapped startup who navigated early hiring and scaling by leveraging contractor talent before converting key contributors to full-time employees. Active in Northern Nevada's startup ecosystem through Generator and StartupNV, and notably declined angel/VC offers to preserve equity because of strong conviction in a differentiated product and its market fit.”

Josh Rhoades

Screened

Executive Technology Leader (CTO) specializing in AI-enabled SaaS and regulated platforms

Los Angeles, CA30y exp

“Senior engineering leader with experience at Disney and BlackLine who drives business-aligned technology roadmaps through deep Product/Engineering partnership (two-in-a-box) and pragmatic prioritization frameworks. Has led major modernization initiatives—private-to-public cloud migration to GCP with multi-cloud evolution, data-layer performance improvements (Mongo/Redis, caching/query optimization), and tooling upgrades (VSS to GitHub)—while scaling teams with strong quality and accountability culture.”

“Former multi-startup CTO with experience supporting successful capital raises and working directly with boards/investors. Known for implementing operational systems that reduce client escalations (e.g., a status/semaphore overview board) and for building UX-forward MVPs that evolve into automated platforms, including a loan underwriting system for a small US lender.”