James Prolizo

About

CIO-level technology leader (most recently at Sovos) who owned the full tech roadmap across product, infrastructure, and corporate IT, scaling engineering across 14 countries with an architectural review board and standardized security/observability. Hands-on in high-severity incidents (ransomware) while managing executive/client communications, and drove a reported 40% product-velocity lift by adopting AI code assistants and agentic AI (Devin) alongside Kubernetes + Bottlerocket for secure scalability.

Key Strengths

• Owned end-to-end technology roadmap (product, infrastructure, corporate IT) aligned to business strategy
• Delivered initiatives on time via stakeholder alignment and monthly steering committees
• Scaled engineering operations across 14 countries with standards plus team autonomy (“freedom within a framework”)
• Established an architectural review board to drive global standards (OS, vulnerability management, observability)
• Led ransomware incident response while delegating tactical command and handling executive/client communications
• Implemented Kubernetes with Bottlerocket baseline to improve security and scalability
• Increased product velocity by ~40% by deploying AI code assistance and agentic AI (Devin)
• Used transparent scorecards and standards to drive accountability and reduce vulnerabilities

Reference Highlights

• Collaborative leadership style
• Strategic and business-aligned mindset
• Transparent with the team
• Provides clear end-goal clarity
• Breaks down silos across departments
• Fosters stronger cross-organization collaboration
• Calm and focused under pressure
• Keeps teams aligned on priorities during high-growth periods
• Effective crisis leadership during a security incident
• Drives productivity and security improvements
• Improves employee satisfaction through automation
• Reduces IT workload through operational automation
• Amazing leadership skills
• Strong at aligning technology goals to business objectives
• Proactive, jumps in to unblock and keep momentum
• Sets very clear objectives and direction
• Effective at reducing technology costs
• Strong vendor negotiation and consolidation impact
• Deep understanding of technology and how technical teams work
• Effective organizational change management
• Builds a culture of trust and openness to surface problems
• Improves clarity of ownership and purpose across teams
• Data-driven approach to sizing teams via workload measurement
• Excels in high-pressure/high-growth environments
• Increases team resiliency
• Innovative; sponsored AI-based process optimization
• Delivered major efficiency gains (80% workload reduction)
• Improved SLAs significantly (20 days to ~5 days)
• Leads with clarity and confidence
• Creates a high-trust culture
• Teams perform beyond their best under his leadership
• Translates technical challenges into business goals (ROI, enterprise value)
• Excellent cross-functional alignment
• Highly effective communication (messages/emails well-received)
• Strategic and thorough in assessing gaps before scaling AI
• Drives speed and agility through POCs
• Makes security everyone's responsibility
• Champions continuous improvement and open communication
• Delivers 15–20% engineering productivity gains via AI tools
• Transforms culture to AI-first product development
• Shifts org mindset from reactive to strategic
• Calm and decisive under pressure; turns chaos into clarity
• Balances stabilization (BAU) with acceleration during growth
• Handles resistance by keeping things simple and creating clarity
• Empowers champions early; develops leaders (not followers)
• Makes success visible; shares wins and learnings from failures
• Rewards the right behaviors; leads with heart
• Closed a seven-figure client deal under extreme time pressure by addressing a security exposure
• Uses security as a product differentiator and enterprise value driver
• Identifies blind spots with early insights on emerging threats/technologies
• Helps build products that are secure, scalable, modern, reliable, and differentiated

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