Vetted Cost Optimization Professionals

“Chief of Staff / PMO leader at CAIS who built a firm-wide product & technology roadmap and delivery governance from the ground up, partnering directly with the executive committee to define OKRs and prioritization. Led cross-functional GTM readiness tracking and delivered major platform modernization (monolith to microservices) plus trade lifecycle automation in the alternative assets/independent financial advisor space, while also instituting financial discipline and vendor negotiations that saved millions.”

Nicholas Ogura

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive Platform & Security Engineering leader specializing in multi-cloud Kubernetes and FinTech

San Diego County, USA18y exp

“Startup-focused infrastructure/security leader who stepped into head of engineering and re-platformed an entire product end-to-end in 3 months to meet launch. In crypto/fintech, recognized the market-data system as an ETL/data product and rebuilt it as a separable, securely accessible platform—prompting inbound interest within a week—while advocating an open-source-first observability stack (Prometheus/Grafana/Loki) to avoid vendor lock-in.”

“Early-stage founder building a service business targeting small clinics, already with one client. Identified the opportunity by helping a family member and then validating needs through direct client conversations; uses AI (including AI agents) for content generation and plans deeper workflow automation to scale cost-effectively.”

Arijit Das

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in AI, cloud, and FinTech transformation

Dallas, TX20y exp

“Fintech operator at Upstart with hands-on experience in lending underwriting and verification automations, now developing a fully automated HELOC product aimed at reducing funding timelines from 30-45 days to 5 days. Brings strong market conviction in the HELOC space and has already spoken with fintech investors interested in a white-label solution for banks and credit unions.”

Joseph Vito

Screened

Principal Technology Transformation Executive specializing in cloud modernization and data platforms

New York, NY35y exp

“AWS advisory leader and long-tenured (4 decades) execution-focused operator who helps startups and enterprise "startup-like" business units scale operations through customer-centric mechanisms (Working Backwards/PRFAQ) and tech-enabled modernization. Delivered concrete process gains (e.g., ~30% faster mortgage workflow and ~10 manual handoffs eliminated via automation/microservices) and advises VC/startups on data/infra ops, AI-driven differentiation, and go-to-market positioning across multiple industries.”

David Lapsley

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader specializing in AI infrastructure and cloud platforms

Tampa, FL14y exp

“Founder building Shipkode.ai, an enterprise SaaS product using generative AI to automate the front half of the software development lifecycle—from idea and customer feedback to engineering-ready specifications—with a beta planned for the first week of April. Has spoken with 24+ VCs over two years and mentors cybersecurity startups through the Tampa Bay Wave accelerator, emphasizing rigorous customer discovery to avoid misaligned product development.”

“Founder of Optibuy, a newly launched advisory firm focused on energy and manufacturing, combining AI, risk management, operational excellence, and digital transformation to solve longstanding industry problems. The candidate is pursuing an E&P studio model to incubate client solutions and has a targeted fundraising strategy aimed at O&G corporate VC arms, energy-focused VCs, and experienced industry angels.”

Jared Alessandroni

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive CTO specializing in AI, cloud platforms, and scaling SaaS products

21y exp

“NYC-based startup founder/CTO who sold products to Omnicom and Sprinklr, then built an AI-powered cultural insights engine inside Omnicom using AWS Lambda + ML to process ~1M items/day and reached ~$1MM ARR in year one. Former senior leader at Sprinklr managing 200+ people globally, delivering enterprise martech solutions with SLAs and high-reliability social data pipelines (Twitter firehose).”

“Operations/engineering leader from Poly who optimized a professional headset portfolio by aggressively prioritizing technical debt and consolidating HW/SW platforms (down to 2 each), accelerating time-to-market by ~6 months and enabling 3–6 month variant cycles. Also drove AI-enabled quality improvements by leveraging JIRA bug data to automate test case creation and expand coverage, while aligning engineering and product management around MVO delivery.”

“CTO-focused candidate with experience at foundations evaluating startups, including reviewing technical architectures and coaching teams to refine ideas for better platform fit and synergies. Prioritizes company culture and integrity when choosing leadership roles.”

“Commercial/GTN leader with GCP experience managing multi-year, multi-megawatt AI/GPU infrastructure commitments, owning segment P&L and governance for take-or-pay/reserved capacity. Drove a major client partnership scaling ARR from $50M to $100M in 18 months by aligning Product/Engineering, GTM, and infra teams and building flexible, margin-protective commercial structures. Known for speeding hyperscaler procurement/security reviews (FedRAMP/SOC2, IAM, data residency) and operationalizing multi-region delivery with landing zones and IaC.”

Suparna Roy

Screened

Executive Cloud Infrastructure & SRE Leader specializing in AI-driven reliability and security

Austin, TX14y exp

“Engineering/technology leader with IBM Cloud experience leading large-scale infrastructure modernization from classic architecture to a standardized VPC/next-generation DC platform. Reports major outcomes including cutting region launch time from ~18 months to ~3 months and reducing operating costs by ~80% via automation, modular undercloud services, and platform standardization, while scaling a globally distributed org with clear service ownership and accountability.”

Ahmed Sadaqat

Screened

Senior Machine Learning Engineer specializing in production ML and predictive analytics

Los Angeles, CA7y exp

“ML/AI engineering leader who has owned end-to-end production systems from experimentation through deployment, monitoring, and iteration at meaningful scale. They describe running a 1M+ records/day prediction platform with 99.9% availability, shipping a RAG-based conversational AI feature for 50,000 active users, and consistently improving precision, latency, reliability, and cost with measurable business impact.”

“DevOps/SRE focused on cloud-based distributed systems, with strong hands-on Kubernetes production experience (microservices deployments, Helm, probes, resource tuning, CI/CD and Docker build standardization). Demonstrated end-to-end troubleshooting across application, infrastructure, and networking layers—e.g., isolating degraded storage via node disk I/O metrics and restoring performance by draining the node and replacing the volume. Builds Python automation for operational reliability, including scheduled Kubernetes secrets rotation integrated with an external secret manager.”