Vetted Vice President of Engineerings in the Bay Area

Jim Woodroffe

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader (CTO/VP) specializing in scaling platforms, AI, and cloud infrastructure

San Francisco, CA24y exp

“Entrepreneurial operator who previously built an AI context layer for personal communication/relationships and has worked with a New York-based venture group to evaluate early-stage ideas from both technical and business angles. Currently exploring broad startup opportunities and collaborating with 2–3 early-stage companies, with a structured approach to assessing market outcomes, competition, and team fit.”

“Engineering/data platform leader from FLYR (airline ML forecasting and automated pricing) who built scalable ingestion/ETL and a canonical data model to onboard airlines with highly heterogeneous source systems. Created a golden-metrics layer for airline KPIs and implemented monitoring/backfill capabilities, cutting onboarding time by 50%+ while improving SLA performance and controlling cloud/ML training costs through stronger data quality gates.”

“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.”

“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.”

Frank Goodman

Screened

Executive Engineering & Product Leader specializing in Cloud/SaaS observability and security

San Jose, CA31y exp

“Product/technology leader with deep security and cloud infrastructure expertise who drove a major shift from hardware-based networking/security appliances to cloud-native capabilities, growing cloud revenue from $0 to $400M in 4.5 years. Led an innovative eBPF-based approach (“precryption”) to enable lightweight cloud TLS interception/decryption, and has hands-on coding interest (recent Rust work on a personal cybersecurity identity/trust platform).”

“Operations/process-focused leader with hands-on manufacturing and quality mindset: improved product stability by preventing oxidation via inert gas and oxygen monitoring, and implemented sensor-based automation to maintain conditions without manual intervention. Uses time studies and benchmarking to redesign workflows (reported ~60% labor reduction per batch) and trains teams on GMP/regulatory and contamination-control practices using practical demonstrations.”

“Part-time founder building a bootstrapped IT startup in the R&D phase, running multiple product iterations and cost/benefit analyses to validate uniqueness and monetization potential. Has prior experience working for venture capital firms and is familiar with how accelerators operate, with a strong focus on finding investors who can be true thought partners for rapid pivots.”

“Cross-functional product/engineering leader with startup and enterprise experience (Whimstay, Wells Fargo, Leap AI Technologies). Has owned end-to-end delivery including UI and payment architecture—built a multi-customer reservation payment flow using pre-auth plus event/timer-driven reminders and handled tricky edge cases like date changeover. Also introduced lightweight process (Jira, sprints, team/module structuring) to increase delivery speed in an early-stage AI document-matching startup.”

Shady Alzayat

Screened

Executive full-stack engineering leader specializing in AI, cloud, and digital platforms

San Francisco, CA23y exp

“Serial entrepreneur building appetier.com, an agentic restaurant marketing and ecommerce automation platform for restaurants. Previously raised for Atlas Mental Health and brings thoughtful fundraising perspective centered on investor alignment, GTM partnership, and vertical SaaS/SMB infrastructure expertise.”

“Silicon Valley operator with ~30 years of experience as a board member, advisor, VC, founder, and turnaround executive, claiming 50+ venture-backed turnarounds. Has driven outsized outcomes including a $1B Nokia spinout and a 9-figure Jaspersoft exit to TIBCO, and is known for pragmatic, people-and-financials-first operational diagnosis (including CRM forensics) and rapid team scaling via structured hiring pipelines.”