Vetted Director of Engineerings

Gibran Rodriguez

Screened

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in cloud, AI, and healthcare platforms

Round Rock, TX16y exp

“Senior engineering leader with a rare mix of org-scaling and deep hands-on technical execution across cloud platforms, AI/RAG systems, IoT, mobile, and operational software. Has led zero-downtime migrations, improved deployment velocity by 50%+, and built DataFabriks from an internal warehouse AI platform into a multi-tenant commercial SaaS product across healthcare and industrial environments.”

“Engineering leader for a facial-recognition edge platform who drove a full-stack modernization to scale from ~100 edge devices to thousands of locations. Led a major distributed-systems re-architecture (NATS streaming), database migration (MongoDB to PostgreSQL + TimeScaleDB), and UI/API modernization (React), while scaling the team 5→15 and implementing CI/CD + automated QA to improve release velocity and reliability.”

“Aspiring founder with strong entrepreneurial motivation, explicitly preferring control, speed, and minimal bureaucracy over joining an existing company. They have not yet started a business, but have begun researching and networking within the VC/accelerator ecosystem and use AI tools to quickly assess market opportunities.”

“Engineering leader with hands-on architecture depth who has improved team delivery cadence to weekly releases by redesigning SDLC ownership and validation workflows. Currently leading AI/LLM product work around meeting-transcript intelligence for sales use cases, with a strong emphasis on observability, prompt tuning, and iterative UX refinement.”

“Startup-focused tech leader with 20+ years of experience who has led engineering teams across multiple startups and pitched inside VC firms. Currently building infrastructure for managing physical wealth—creating a canonical data layer that integrates with wealth management systems to account for precious metals and other tangible assets—and is prepared to raise capital to align with the right partners.”

“Unity engineer with deep gameplay AI and multiplayer networking experience: built lethal, squad-coordinated NPC combat AI using behavior trees/blackboards, and re-architected a PvP title from Photon-style peer networking to a server-authoritative FishNet dedicated-server model with PlayFab matchmaking. Also integrated multiple open-source LLM pipelines (3D asset generation via Trellis, TTS, music) into dockerized, autoscaling cloud endpoints and shipped an iOS + visionOS/Vision Pro experience featuring BCI-driven input and on-device TensorFlow inference.”

“Freelance Unity/XR developer with multiple Meta Quest projects (including non-game XR apps) and a 1st-place win at Meta’s Sense AI hackathon in Barcelona for an AI camera-access VR assistant for vehicle repairs. Built a VR Spanish-learning experience solo and has hands-on experience optimizing VR performance (culling, view restriction) and integrating voice recognition for language interactions.”

Joseph Whissel

Screened

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in scalable SaaS, cloud, and embedded systems

12y exp

“Startup-experienced builder exploring an ambitious “internet 2.0” concept: a decentralized wireless mesh network using custom hardware nodes, with a security-first communications goal. Has thought through adoption mechanics via at-cost node distribution, usage-based crypto incentives, and an AR area-control game to drive network growth; also brings practical insight into what VCs value from working at startups including one owned by a PE firm.”

Jonathan Lee

Screened

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in agentic AI systems

Austin, TX19y exp

“Engineering leader and hands-on architect who built a team from scratch and owned everything from architecture and security to DevOps and deployment. Has led sophisticated AI/agentic systems in legal-tech and operations, including demand-letter automation, news/content generation, and human-in-the-loop fax routing, while also guiding major infrastructure and enterprise telephony transitions.”