Vetted Vice President of Engineerings in California

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 leader who built and scaled a distributed team (Serbia + US) to deliver an internal multi-tenant Kubernetes-based PaaS, moving a large org from manual ops-driven deployments to automated CI/CD with >99.97% uptime and 100% service adoption. Known for culture change (blameless post-mortems, clear intake via ticketing) and security-first platform practices (tenant isolation, Falco) supporting SOC2 compliance; also operates at exec level with stakeholder communication and fundraising.”

“Engineering leader who built and delivered an IoT smart-spaces platform for the self-storage and smart-living domains, translating customer requirements into architecture, capability maps, and a multi-milestone roadmap. Personally stood up missing AI/ML capabilities (including churn prediction) using Databricks (Delta Lake/MLflow), enabling follow-on features like energy optimization and security/anomaly detection. Scaled an org from 20 to 80+ with disciplined Agile planning (Jira Advanced Roadmaps/Confluence) and strong executive/customer-facing leadership during high-stakes customer commitments.”

“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).”

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.”

“Climate-tech founder with multiple EV infrastructure ventures, including Electriflow Finance and ChargeNet Stations. Has already raised $300k, signed a $1M term sheet, and piloted an AI-driven, app-less EV fleet charging platform with 36 fleets in Southern California.”

“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.”