Vetted Engineering Managers

Prayasha Chaudhary

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Senior Engineering Leader specializing in cloud architecture and AI-powered data platforms

Remote5y exp

“Hands-on startup operator with experience across three startups, including companies built from inception and a PEAK6-backed environment. Particularly compelling for early-stage roles: they have rebuilt technical foundations, scaled platforms during growth, and pair strong product ownership with a practical, user-validation-first approach to building scalable systems.”

Bill Cheng

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Director-level Engineering Leader specializing in SaaS platforms and AI systems

Remote, USA26y exp

“Entrepreneurial candidate building an LLC focused on applying AI to improve call center customer service, with an early go-to-market focus on local government call centers. They are already in discussions with a government prospect and have a clear thesis around solving high turnover and low knowledge retention through AI-assisted training and support systems.”

“Backend-focused JavaScript/Node.js engineer with e-commerce domain depth from Decathlon, working on foundational microservices for order management, inventory, and fulfillment integrations. Led an infrastructure redesign and shipped a Shopify-based persistent cart experience, diagnosing early production issues via monitoring/log analysis and improving reliability through stronger session persistence and fault-tolerant architecture.”

Mike Gardiner

Screened

Technology Executive / Engineering Director specializing in AI-driven platform transformation

Lehi, UT12y exp

“Built a 0-to-1 iOS mobile gardening application that helps users plan, track, and harvest crops with pest control guidance, weather, and climate-zone-based planting date recommendations. Demonstrated strong customer discovery and MVP-first product execution, including a major data challenge: compiling US climate zone data for every ZIP code from widely dispersed public sources into an app-ready database.”

Rajesh Sivakumar

Screened

Senior Software Engineering Manager specializing in cloud-native distributed systems (FinTech & Healthcare)

San Francisco, CA26y exp

“Engineering leader/player-coach who has led 40+ developers across multiple teams on large financial services web applications (Wells Fargo) and previously delivered a banking mobile app MVP in 6 months with a junior team by setting patterns and CI/CD foundations. Strong in production reliability practices (Splunk monitoring, feature flags, throttled rollouts) and has driven measurable quality/velocity wins, including a 60% faster E2E test framework and a rapid 2-day hotfix during a React 16→18 migration.”

“Infrastructure/automation engineer with experience bridging post-acquisition environments (Pandora + SiriusXM) by building an API-driven integration to provision Debian workloads on RHV while preserving iPXE-based imaging workflows. Strong in deep debugging across virtualization/network/OS layers (e.g., resolving virtio/vCPU contention causing network/NFS issues) and in extending automation tooling via custom Ansible/Python modules. Also has exposure to biomanufacturing on-prem devices (Hamiltons, shakers) alongside AWS microservices.”

Timothy Flechtner

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive Technology & Product Leader specializing in games, platforms, and real-time systems

23y exp

“Engineering leader with gaming and fintech/trading-firm experience who built a sponsor-funded gaming rewards platform (AmEx-style) requiring integrations across Steam/Epic/Xbox/PlayStation and Discord. Emphasizes production-grade, 12-factor delivery with Terraform/Docker/CI/CD and automated testing, plus pragmatic org scaling and remote-team culture built on aligned autonomy and trust.”

EMMANUEL ETIENNE

Screened

Engineering Manager specializing in FinTech money movement and AI-driven infrastructure

Brooklyn, NY12y exp

“Player-coach fintech engineer/engineering lead who built a deterministic payer-ID wire reconciliation system with Citi, including idempotent ingestion and webhook processing across Ruby and Go, materially reducing accounting manual work. Experienced in incident response (Plaid-related customer-impacting issue), stakeholder-driven MVP scoping for ACH status visibility, and delivery acceleration via infrastructure templating (EC2) and standardized Magento project setups.”

Tyler Stroud

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader specializing in AdTech and scalable cloud platforms

Miami, FL15y exp

“Engineering leader with experience in small, bootstrapped startups and exposure to VC environments, currently pursuing CTO-level opportunities. Thrives in fast-iterating, high-uncertainty settings and emphasizes data-driven clarity plus strong problem/market validation when evaluating new ventures.”

“Startup and early-internet product leader with repeated experience building in new companies and executing pivots. Helped transform a web-based calendar business into a CMS + RBAC platform that became best-in-breed for US K-12 organizations within about three years, emphasizing ROI-driven prototyping and market validation to conserve resources.”

“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.”

Luke Evers

Screened

Director-level engineering leader specializing in full-stack product and e-commerce systems

Remote12y exp

“Candidate is an aspiring founder currently exploring startup ideas and potential collaborators, with firsthand experience as an early employee at VC-backed companies, including joining a current company shortly after seed funding. They have not raised capital themselves but bring early-stage operating exposure and a strong desire to build something they own with a high-trust team.”