Dallas Heliker

About

Engineering leader who modernized infrastructure by migrating a ~100-server co-location setup to AWS/GCP with IaC, auto-scaling, and fault-tolerant design, reducing hardware upgrade burden. Also led a key analytics architecture shift from MySQL to ClickHouse to enable highly granular ad revenue attribution and profitability insights, while scaling the dev org from 2–3 to ~12 with stronger CI/testing and review processes.

Experience

Education

Key Strengths

• Led on-prem co-location (100 servers) to cloud (AWS/GCP) migration using IaC and DevOps practices
• Built auto-scaling, fault-tolerant infrastructure with no single points of failure
• Scaled engineering team from 2–3 developers to ~12 by implementing CI, unit tests, code review, and QA/automation processes
• Drove major data architecture decision (MySQL to ClickHouse) to enable granular ad revenue attribution at high event volumes
• Bridges executive/stakeholder needs with hands-on technical leadership via code reviews and developer coaching
• Uses inclusive planning processes to drive adoption of change and accountability in distributed teams
• Owned end-to-end architecture and integration of an OpenAI-powered customer service chatbot
• Implemented QA processes to reduce AI response errors before customer-facing delivery
• Built faster decisioning for paid-traffic spend using 6 months of historical data and demographic segmentation
• Improved reliability/performance via auto-scaling, load balancing, and automated DB replica scaling using IaC (Terraform/Chef) across AWS and GCP
• Player-coach leadership: structured management/coding split while staying hands-on
• People management with regular 1:1s, annual performance reviews, coaching, and underperformance improvement plans
• Data-driven execution: real-time reporting/analytics dashboards to maintain quality while scaling volume